True Warriors Never Die
by Kenchi618
Summary: With enough time anyone can call themselves a master of life, but no matter how much time goes by one cannot truly understand existence as a whole without first having experienced death. How will one blond handle his brush with it? - "Wait... what?"
1. Just Passing Through

***Okay, for those of you in the know, my name is Kenchi618. Well, not really, but I'll be damned if I'm putting out my government on a public website, I have enough enemies thank you. However this is not the point. The point is this: New story attempt, and I hope it goes over well with the general populace. So here's hoping for knocking this one out of the park, I hope you all dig it.**

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Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. But how awesome would that be if I did? My pimptacular prowess would be matched by no one for all eternity, and my name would go down in the pantheon of legends as the greatest man that has ever lived! …In theory of course.

**True Warriors Never Die**

**Chapter 1: Just Passing Through**

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_Whoever said life is short obviously never had certain aspects of theirs all in order. What do you do when you've achieved everything that you've ever set out to do? Most people would say that doing such a thing would mean that it was time to rest and reflect on your life. Looking back at everything you've ever done, reveling in your victories and successes, dwelling in your defeats and failures. Pretty much just going over every part of your life, because if you've achieved everything you've set out to do that you saw as important that is all you can do at that point, simply reflect on the past._

_Well what happens when you do that… and you keep doing that… and doing it… and doing it… until you've run through every facet of your life enough times to relive it ten times over? Eventually you get bored. Of course you're probably thinking, "But wait? Ten times over? Shouldn't you be dead?" Well yeah… I should. That's pretty much the point of this little tirade of mine. I'm not dead. Because of the things I did and a certain mixture of traits that I was born with/developed throughout the course of my very chaotic and hectic life I can't just die, not of old age. Not really of disease either, because my immune system is better than any kind of health care you could think of, ha! And not from anyone trying to kill me either; because I haven't had anyone worth talking about actively pursuing my life for… Kami, I would guess a few hundred years at this point._

_Yes, a few hundred years. Apparently the two toads that taught me the way of the sages weren't bluffing when they told me of their ages, being well over 800 years old when I met them, and believe it or not they're _still_ alive. Just like me. Add that to the fact that one of my greatest and most well-known traits; my unflinching vitality and ability to damn near regenerate any significant damage done to me if given enough time carried over into my lifespan as well. So despite the fact that I am undoubtedly the oldest old man alive on the face of the planet, I sure as hell don't look like it. It makes it very hard for people to take you seriously when you spout proverbs and important life facts, but you don't look a day over 21 years old, hell these days people think I look younger than that._

A blonde young man climbed off of a bus at a station, letting out a massive yawn and scratching his hair as he slung his bag over his back. Rubbing his eyes after awakening from a nap taken during the long ride, he scanned the crowd of people that had gotten off with him meeting loved ones or hurrying off to their intended destinations. He simply took his time before walking off going on his own way, he didn't have any living loved ones or anywhere in particular to be.

He had seen the world time and time again, but he had always missed coming to this little spot, "Karakura Town." Not a very assuming place, not very high at all on his favorite list of places to visit, actually pretty normal as far as he was concerned. Par the course for the cities and towns that populated the world in this era, not too big, and not so small.

_So I simply go about my business, which is no business. I travel about, doing random things, whatever I can do to fight the still life. I've never been registered as a citizen of anywhere? How could I be, I'm more or less immortal. Eventually people would get suspicious when the same guy they knew as an eight year old was alive and kicking, still looking younger than they were when they were pushing grey hairs right? I'm more or less a drifter, making money to get to one place from the next, doing whatever interests me at the time. With nothing important to really take care of what else could I do?_

The young man had his blonde hair in a wild spiky manner on his head, a pair of goggles on his forehead to keep his wild bangs out of his eyes to go with bright blue eyes and strange whisker-marks on his cheeks. He was wearing a pair of navy blue jeans, white sneakers, and a white t-shirt underneath an unzipped orange windbreaker jacket with a black stripe going down the sleeves. Around his neck was a blue bandanna with a worn, old metal plate sewn to it. If one were looking intently at it they could make out the symbol of a leaf on the plate.

_Still I continued to cultivate the skills and abilities that I spent the majority of my embattled youth learning and living around, because you never know, right? The energy known in my time as chakra, the blending of spiritual and physical energies began to fade from use, and while I had seen people who had used ki or what I called __Youton (Yang Release)__, the physical embodiment of the two, I had never seen anyone use both. But as I developed my skills with both I learned the extent of the spiritual half of chakra, __Inton (Yin Release)__, but I had never heard of any common name from that due to the fact that I had never met anyone that knew of it enough to name it properly, it had so many names I just decided to call it what I knew it as._

_Due to my more intoned affinity with Inton as time carried on I started seeing things. Spirits, specters, phantoms, poltergeists, spooks. Of course I'm talking about ghosts ladies and gentleman, the deceased embodiments of the dearly departed. But instead of being scared or anything stupid like that I was actually pretty fired up, and why wouldn't I be? I could see dead people now. The first thing I did when I came to terms with this was hightail it as fast as I could back to the lands that my people once inhabited back in my original era and see if I could see any old haunts around from back then._

_Unfortunately I had no such luck. Everyone had passed on or weren't around anymore. It was for the best though, it would have been really selfish of me to want my friends and precious people to have hung around for hundreds of years with regrets, lingering all alone, bound to one place. So I kept travelling, eventually making my way to the here and now._

_Why is this important? Why out of all of the abilities that I've amassed over my long, long, long, _long_ life is this the one that I'm talking about the most? Because even if death never comes looking for you, and you never go looking for it, eventually whether either of you know it or not your paths are going to cross. And it might not be the meeting that you expected it to be._

The man walked through Karakura Town taking in the quaint sights. He had walked past a few groups of street punks that tried to leer him down, but he just walked on past them with a bark of laughter and kept on about his unassuming way. He didn't really mean to be a jerk about it, but he had faced down men with the power to destroy this city with a wiggle of their nose. A few kids with weapons consisting of at the worst, a pair of brass knuckles or a flimsy switchblade was funny to him, he was sorry, but he just couldn't take them seriously.

The fact that they had left him alone after he had done so was something of a compliment to him. Either they thought he looked like more trouble than he was really worth in the end, or he looked normal enough that doing anything to go after him wasn't really reasonable enough for a gang of delinquents. He found that the more time that had passed the more either one of his traits from his time as a shinobi stood out. His ability to blend in and mix with general populations was becoming the more prominent trait as opposed to having to show that he was the single most powerful person on the planet. If his face was getting too much attention that he didn't need or want he could either make tracks from the point of interest, or make a few hand-seals and in a puff of smoke he was somebody completely different. He didn't know how many bullshit aliases he had come up with over the years, but in more recent times he started getting lazier and lazier about it and transforming into people he had met at certain points in his life and using their names.

He reached into his pocket and fished out his wallet before pulling out current kinds of identification in case it came to that, "Alright, so we're back to using Uzumaki Naruto on the rotation for my name again? Works for me." He said to himself before continuing along.

There was something Naruto was sensing about this town that he just couldn't put his finger on. There was a feeling in the air about the place that felt familiar, he just never felt enough of the feeling that was making him antsy to be able to readily identify what it was. But it was definitely putting him on edge and it was something he wasn't ready to chalk up to paranoia, because at some point paranoia just means that your gut is getting better and better at figuring out you're in trouble before you ever realize it yourself.

ROAR

Naruto looked up in the sky to see what he thought were… cracks? Yes, after waiting a moment and seeing them get bigger he could definitely say with full brevity and confidence that those were cracks in the fucking sky.

He looked around at the people, but kept his cool as when he heard the roar and saw the cracks he hadn't heard or seen anyone begin to freak out and run, 'So either this kind of thing happens all the time and it's not dangerous enough for people to really care-.'

Multiple roars sounded out through different areas while cracks of all kinds appeared in the sky all over Karakura Town's skyline. Making himself scarce so that he could get himself to the top of a decently sized building for a better look, Naruto sweatdropped when he saw dozens of cracks all over the sky… with gigantic monsters punching holes through them and entering, dropping from the sky into Karakura Town. He looked down and still saw people walking about as if nothing were happening, '-Or… the more likely of the two possible scenarios; no one else can see any of this happening… *sigh* I was really hoping that it wasn't the second one.'

"I'm too old for this shit." Naruto mumbled to himself before dipping into his power for a second, his eyes turning orange, "Man, these things are just radiating hatred and violent desires…" He picked up from his harnessed ability to sense negative emotions, "What are these things?"

ROAR

Naruto looked up and saw a crack above his head shatter, dropping one of these creatures down on his position, forcing him to jump out of the way lest he be crushed or have who knows what happen to him. As the dust from the monster's landing cleared, Naruto got a good look at what exactly he had seen begin infesting the town. The massive green humanoid creature stood at least an entire person larger than Naruto with a massive hole in its chest where its heart should have been and had spikes jutting from its arms, legs, the back of its neck, and the top of its head. On its face was a white skull mask with a twisted expression. Once it saw Naruto its eyes glowed red, letting its intentions with him be known.

"Yeah okay, good… whatever it is that you are." Naruto said, slowly creeping back on the balls of his toes, as if he were talking to a rabid dog that he was trying to edge away from before breaking out in a run. The monster opened its mouth to reveal another one behind it, "Aww, now that's a pretty smile." The monster roared again and turned its entire body towards Naruto, "Yeah, you're going to stay there and I'm going to get the hell out of here.

Naruto immediately jumped from that rooftop to another a distance away in one bound, hearing the roar of the monster that was more or less demanding him to turn around. Naruto looked over his shoulder and smirked, "Yeah, you've got to get up pretty early in the late afternoon to put down Uzumaki Naruto! Don't you know who I am?" He stopped running and turned to face the monster that hadn't begun pursuing him yet in order to taunt it in grandiose fashion, "I am the-!"

ROAR

Naruto slowly turned around to find three more monsters different in appearance behind him. All of them large and hulking, and each of them with a skull mask on with evil faces. Naruto sighed, "What the hell? Does anyone else have to deal with this kind of crap or is it just me like always?"

XxX

"Why is it always me that has to deal with this kind of shit?" A teen with spiky orange hair yelled to no one in particular. He was tall and lean-built with brown angry looking eyes… of course that probably had to do with the hoard of monsters that he was currently cutting through with his oversized sword. He was wearing a black hakama, a black kosode, white socks, and traditional straw sandals.

'I've been killing Hollows all day long and they still just keep coming!' He thought to himself as he quickly cut down the now identified 'Hollows', "This is all Ishida Uryuu's fault! After all this is over I'm finding Ishida and kicking his ass until he fixes this!" The picture of a black haired teen with glasses, a school uniform and an arrogant look on his face taunting him filled the orange-haired boy's mind.

The boy growled to himself and kept running down the street he was on, "I'm coming for you Ishida! Don't underestimate my instincts you bastard!"

XxX

An arrow of pure energy pierced the mask of another Hollow, forcing it to break and the body of the Hollow to fade into nothing.

The black-haired teen that had been cursed out by the other stood with a bow of energy in one hand, his other drawn back as if he had just gotten through firing it, with blood dripping off of his finger tips, "It's getting harder to kill them with one strike."

He thought to himself, 'The number of Hollows is far too high for the amount of bait I used. I can't seem to keep up with just my strength and ability… at this rate I'll-.' He violently squashed any negative thoughts he may have been propagating in his head, 'No! No whining, I can do it! I won't lose to Kurosaki Ichigo! I haven't made a mistake! I will avenge my sensei!' He then threw himself back into his hunt for Hollows.

XxX

"Hadou #4: Byakurai (Way of Destruction #4: Pale Lightning)!" A small, petite girl with violet eyes and black hair wearing a school uniform shot off a small bolt of lightning from her index and middle fingertips at a Hollow that simply bounced off of it harmlessly, prompting the Hollow to take a swing at her, forcing her to jump back in evasion.

She glared at the Hollow, 'Shit, my Kido didn't work at all, and this Hollow is just a small-fry. I've been in this Gigai for two months and my strength still hasn't recovered at all!'

The Hollow lifted its arm to smash the girl into the ground when all of a sudden it was kicked in the side of the head by an orange blur, 'Ichigo?'

"Rukia-neesan!" 'Ichigo' yelled as he attempted to latch onto the girl in a hug. At second glance, 'Ichigo' was wearing his own school uniform, not the combat-gear from his battles, "I've missed you!"

Rukia held him back from hugging her, "Kon? Damn it Kon, that's you isn't it?" She stopped him from advancing any further with her foot pushing on his face, "Wait, if you're here in Ichigo's body then that means he transformed into a Shinigami huh?"

"Yeah." Kon, the spirit in Ichigo's body said, "I think there was something I was supposed to find you and ask about, but I can't really remember what it was."

Rukia got a tick mark on her head and started mashing on Kon's head harder with her foot, "Really? Well I guess I have to Help you remember don't I?"

"Oh, well that's good. This place is safe at least."

Both Rukia and Kon looked towards the direction of the voice to see Uryuu standing there, "What the hell are you talking about?" Kon roared angrily at Uryuu, "This entire situation is your fault! You started all of this by trying to kill everyone in town calling all of those Hollows here with that bait!"

Rukia looked at Uryuu with a mistrusting expression, "I see… so this is your handiwork after all."

Uryuu smirked, "Well a pleasure to meet you is probably what I should say. This is the first time I've spoken privately to you like this Kuchiki Rukia." He spoke next, getting Kon's attention, "You there… the spirit in Kurosaki's body. You're correct when you say that I started the fight, however I won't let a single person in this town die!" He said, surprising both Rukia and Kon with his conviction, "Even if Kurosaki Ichigo dies I will protect the people in this town with my life. If I can't do that then this fight has no meaning."

"What are you trying to prove?" Rukia asked him, ignoring the Hollow that Kon kicked getting back to its feet to attack her and him again.

"Damn!" Uryuu quickly formed his bow to destroy the Hollow when its head was suddenly cut off.

"I finally found you, you son of a bitch!"

Uryuu turned his head and tilted his glassed back onto his face properly, "Kurosaki…"

Ichigo stood at the top of a flight of park stairs, "Hey there Ishida."

XxX

(With Naruto)

Naruto dodged another one of the Hollows chasing after him. He had finally gotten sick of running and turned to fight the ones that had been after him before, but that only seemed to draw more to him, forcing him into the decision to run again. "This is so stupid! Why in the hell do these things want to come and mess with me for? I just got here! Who could I have possibly pissed off to have them sic demons on me?"

Naruto quickly learned that the weapons he carried on him did next to nothing to these things. To even hit them he needed to generate yin chakra to his weapons before using them, if he didn't they would just fly on through them as if they were ghosts. His regular ninjutsu would barely leave a mark on them. The only things that were guaranteed to work out for sure were his own fists and feet. So he was pretty much fighting freaky monster ghosts? Okay, he'd bite. What were they doing coming after him? They didn't seem very pissed about him taking the others out, they just all seemed to want a piece of him for no reason.

Letting his thoughts sidetrack him, Naruto let out a very unmanly shriek before jumping over a horizontal swipe of one of the Hollow's tails before landing on its head in a hard stomp that wound up cracking the mask and shattering it.

Naruto stood in place as the dust settled, breathing heavily due to his impromptu combat session before turning to the sky and yelling defiantly, "What? Is that all you've got for me, a few ugly-ass horror movie rejects? Did you think that would do anything to me? I'm Uzumaki 'fucking' Naruto in case you haven't gotten the point yet after all of these years! I could have done that in my sleep!" He started walking around on the rooftop of the rather high building he had fled to in order to fight, "What else do you have for me? Come on, I honestly want to know! I've fought scarier stuff when I was sixteen!"

Of course after he finished his anger and adrenaline induced rant he noticed all of the cracks in the sky gathering to one spot in the park where every Hollow left in Karakura Town began swarming towards the crack. One of the Hollows swarming about broke off and flew towards Naruto trying to devour him.

Naruto grit his teeth and drew his right arm back, forming a pure black, almost translucent, orb of spiraling energy in his hand, bringing a loud suction noise from the attack, "Inton: Rasengan (Yin Release: Rasengan)!" Naruto slammed the ball into the mask of the Hollow and carved straight through the middle of its body, destroying it. Letting his guard down once more, Naruto broke into a short victory dance, "The strongest men of my time trying to take over the world couldn't kill me, nature couldn't kill me, and time couldn't kill me, I'm going to solve this too. You're going to have to send the Shinigami himself to put me down for good!"

The sound of the sky cracking grew louder than ever before a pair of massive bony fingers peeled back the sky to reveal a gigantic skull mask with a pointy nose bigger than any Hollow Naruto had fought thus far.

"Raahhh!" Naruto shouted angrily, stomping his foot and cursing to himself. Naruto took a deep breath and calmed himself down as he massaged his temple because of the headache this entire day was giving him, "Okay, I'll go deal with that too. Why not? I haven't gotten a place to stay while I'm here or even a bite to eat in like sixteen hours but who cares because the sky decided to rain freaky ghosts onto me for the hell of it." Naruto made a ram hand-seal with both hands, "Shunshin no Jutsu (Body Flicker Jutsu)!" His body was surrounded by a swirl of wind and leaves before he disappeared from the roof.

After a moment, a black cat hopped out from behind an air-conditioning unit and looked at where Naruto had once been standing before speaking in a masculine voice, "Hmm, it looks like Kisuke forgot someone when he was rounding those other kids up. And this one seems to know what he's doing at least as far as the fighting aspect of it goes… after all, he didn't black out and he's been fighting just as many Hollows as the Substitute Shinigami and the Quincy."

The cat the blinked and laughed sheepishly, "Oh right… I was supposed to help round up the spiritually aware for Kisuke wasn't I? Oops, I'd better go catch him before I lose him for the time being." The cat ran and jumped off of the side of the building.

XxX

Rukia stood staring in horror at the sky as the massive Hollow pulled its way through the hole in the sky. Kon came up behind her, looking at the exact same sight, "W-What is that huge Hollow Rukia-neesan?"

Rukia whispered her reply as if she couldn't believe she was seeing it with her own eyes, "Menos… a gigantic Hollow born from hundreds of Hollows piling and mixing together. But I've only ever seen something like this as an illustration in a textbook, the great Hollow; Menos Grande." Kon simply listened to her as she continued to explain, "This is inconceivable for that thing to come out like this. Those are under the jurisdiction of the elite forces. A lone Shinigami couldn't hope to oppose it."

The Menos Grande opened its mouth as multiple Hollows swarmed around it and fired off a massive red blast of energy that eradicated all of the Hollows caught in the range of fire. The few unlucky ones that got close to its mouth when it decided to shut it wound up being eaten.

"It's eating its fellow Hollows!" Uryuu cried out in disbelief. He wasn't aware that Hollows devoured each other like that, just humans.

Ichigo started laughing, "There's no way we can figure out how to fight that kind of monster. With this guy-." He started swinging his massive sword around like a lunatic, "-We'll cut, and cut, and cut, and cut until we take him down for good! There's no other way!" Ichigo then ran off towards the massive Hollow, "Come on Ishida!

"Wait Kurosaki!" Uryuu cried out as he followed behind him, not wanting to be left out of the battle.

Rukia saw Ichigo run past her towards the Menos, swinging his sword like a berserker, "Ichigo? Ichigo quit it! You can't fight that thing, it'll annihilate you!" Before she could try to go after him, a blonde man with a scraggly beard, bucket hat, a long cloak draped over his frame, and wooden sandals stood in front of her, blocking her from going after Ichigo, "Urahara, what's the meaning of this?" She asked him offensively, "Are you trying to get Ichigo killed?"

"Of course not." The man replied casually.

Rukia shoved him out of the way, "Then move aside! This isn't an opponent Ichigo can win against!" She was stopped when Urahara's hand held her back.

"Yeah, I can't really do that Kuchiki-san." He said calmly and coolly, "Please just watch quietly." Rukia's body dropped to the ground as if she were frozen, "This battle is crucial. As crucial to to you as it will be for him."

XxX

Ichigo drew closer to the Menos Grande and with a battle cry cut into the side of its leg. However his massive blade only made a small gash before the Hollow kicked him off as if he were an annoyance. Ichigo landed next to Uryuu on his back, "I told you that wouldn't work Kurosaki!" He fired an arrow at the mask that simply bounced off, "Shit! Just as I thought, I can't do anyt kind of damage at this rate." He looked over at the still downed Ichigo, "Are you alright?"

Ichigo popped right back up with a hearty salute and a smile, although he had a gash bleeding on his forehead, "Huh? Yeah, I'm not too bad off." He replied cheerfully.

"What were you thinking?" Uryuu asked him, not sure that he really wanted to know the thoughts that filled Ichigo's head, "How on earth were you going to take him down with that?"

"Well…" Ichigo said thoughtfully, prepared for his explanation, "I figured I could cut his feet and work my way all the way up to the head where I could start wailing on the mask since he's so big."

"Geez, were you dropped on your head at some point or something?" Uryuu asked as he grabbed Ichigo's sword from him, "Now get up. We need to rethink our battle strategy." However when he did, his bow overloaded with power, "What?" He then stared at Ichigo who was complaining that they didn't even have a plan in the first place, 'No way… This is Kurosaki's Reiryoku (Spiritual Power)? If this is the amount of power he releases unconsciously…'

"Kurosaki."

Uryuu got Ichigo's attention away from his own mutterings, getting him to look over at him, "What do you wa-? Whoa, what the hell is that? Why is your bow so huge now?"

"That's not important!" Uryuu said in response, lying to Ichigo and himself unknowingly since that was exactly what was important at the time, "This may sound like a weird idea, but I know how we can beat him!

XxX

(With Naruto)

Naruto sat on a lower building surrounding the park quite a ways away from the Menos as he looked at it and tried to come up with some sort of strategy before running in and getting his ass kicked, "Okay, only my yin chakra will work on this stupid thing… and I don't think that the Inton: Rasengan (Yin Release: Rasengan) will be enough to put this giant S.O.B. down on the first try. *sigh* And I only thought it was useful to me for seeing ghosts. I never thought I would have to fight them. I guess I should work on that when I get a chance if I get out of this." Naruto punched himself in the head angrily, "How did the Rikudou Sennin learn how to use this crap? He didn't even have anyone teaching him, and neither do I! That's why I can only use it with the Rasengan damn it!"

Naruto growled to himself, "Fine…" He said, shutting his eyes before taking up a meditative seating position, "If that's how it's going to be then I'm totally game for it. I know exactly what to do."

Naruto let the feeling of the environment's natural energy fill him. There wasn't much to work with seeing as how he was in the middle of a city far more modernized than the ones that existed in his time, making it more difficult than before, but it would have to do for now. Beggars couldn't be choosers in this case. He cracked an eye when he felt a weight on his shoulder and saw that a black cat had perched itself there, looking at him curiously, "Well hey there little buddy." He said with a grin, "Are you going to help me out with this?"

The cat let out a meow as if it could understand him and rubbed up against the side of his head, getting a laugh out of him, "Well that seems like a yes to me. Just hang out with me for a while little kitty cat while I get myself all set up for this." Naruto shut his eyes and began meditating.

XxX

(With Ichigo and Uryuu)

"Okay preparations are complete! Now we can fight him!" Uryuu said determinedly and confidently.

Uryuu had managed to form an awesomely large bow, rippling with spiritual power. How did he accomplish this instead of having a regular-sized bow? Well-, "You really are an idiot aren't you?" Ichigo asked.

-He tied Ichigo's sword to the top of his head while having Ichigo himself hold onto it and subconsciously generate power for him to use, "Stop complaining!" Uryuu snapped at him irritably, "If I stay in contact with your sword and use your Reiryoku I can shoot an unbelievably enormous arrow! Now go ahead and unleash your power! Control it and max it out!"

Ichigo looked at him skeptically, "But I never control my Reiryoku."

"What?" Uryuu said to him in pure disbelief, "Don't be ridiculous, how else would you have managed to fight Hollows all of this time?"

"No clue actually." Ichigo said, completely honest, "And how should I know? Controlling this stuff is like unleashing it and stopping it right? It would be easy if I could control it like a water hose or something. If people keep saying my power is great isn't that because I'm maxing it out all the time?"

'That makes sense.' Uryuu thought to himself, 'But to constantly have his Reiryoku maxed out all of the time and not be exhausted? What a monster.'

The Hollow suddenly roared and opened its mouth, forming another of the red beams it had used before, taking aim at Uryuu and Ichigo.

"Cero…" Rukia said helplessly from the sidelines, "It's going to use the Cero! Ichigo run! If that thing hits you, you won't have a chance, you'll be killed!"

Uryuu pulled his bow up to take aim, "Come on Kurosaki this is the only way! Connect your sword to my body aga-!" He cut himself off when he saw Ichigo running at the Menos Grande once more to attack it, "Where do you think you're going?"

The Menos Grande fired the blast at the incoming Ichigo who lifted his oversized sword to block it. Ichigo grit his teeth and held out against the energy blast. Uryuu looked on in awe as Ichigo's power began to climb, 'What the hell is this strong Reiatsu (Spiritual Pressure)? Kurosaki's getting stronger.' He then realized what was happening, 'No he was never maxing out his power. If he had been then eventually it would have dried out. If he can't control his power it means he wasn't using his power to fight. His Reiryoku is always in its _lowest_ state.'

'If any outside force makes him exert anymore energy…' Uryuu thought to himself as Ichigo countered and slashed back, greatly wounding the Menos Grande.

"He wounded the Hollow!" Rukia couldn't believe what she had just seen. A substitute was able to wound a Menos Grande greatly after only two months of being on the job and no formal training, "It's retreating!"

The Menos had torn a hole out of the air and was attempting to retreat by climbing back inside.

"Get back here! I'm not done with you yet!" Ichigo yelled at the Menos, "I still have to kick your ass!"

"No you don't you gigantic ugly bastard!" A voice unfamiliar to everyone in attendance called out aggressively. A yellow and orange blur ran past Ichigo and Uryuu towards the trees where it jumped up the sides rapidly before reaching the top of one and, using it like a slingshot, flung itself at the massive Hollow. At a closer look it was a blonde boy with an orange jacket on flying at the Menos. He formed a cross sign with his fingers in the air forming a copy of himself and held out his hand where the copy started generating power, "Eat this! Inton: Chou Odama Rasengan (Yin Release: Super Great Ball Spiraling Sphere)!"

A massive black spiraling orb twice the size of his entire body immediately formed and crashed into the face of the Menos Grande, bringing it down with a mighty roar as it died trying to climb into its portal to leave Karakura Town.

Ichigo and Uryuu ran over to where an incredible amount of dust was kicked up from the fall of the massive Menos where they saw the strange blonde dusting himself off with a huge grin on his face a strange orange pigment around his eyes and the eyes themselves strangely colored and detailed before they faded leaving normal bright blue eyes, "Man that felt good!" He shouted before sticking his arm out at Uryuu and Ichigo in a thumbs-up gesture, "We sure kicked that thing's ass huh?"

Ichigo and Uryuu looked at each other before blinking and turning back to him, "Um, yeah, sure." Ichigo decided to ask, "Wait, you can see me? Who are you supposed to be?"

Naruto blinked and changed the thumbs-up to an extended hand, "Well yeah I can see you samurai boy. My name's Naruto, how about yours?"

"Ichigo. How can you see me? I'm supposed to be just a spirit right now." Ichigo wondered to himself, not really expecting an answer.

Naruto kept his hand extended for Uryuu who didn't shake it, causing him to eventually retract it, "Well I saw those gigantic ghost things that were trying to kill me, so why wouldn't I be able to see you?"

"Hollows." Uryuu said matter-of-factly, "What you saw and fought were Hollows."

"Huh." Naruto said, storing this information, "You learn something new every day I guess… So what are you two supposed to be anyway? What is this, a cosplay group? Because I don't know what you two are supposed be if it is."

Uryuu and Ichigo face-faulted on the ground before the orange-haired teen stood first, getting in Naruto's face, "I'm a Substitute Shinigami! What are _you _supposed to be? How did you finish off that Hollow like that?"

"Because I'm awesome." Naruto said with a cheeky grin, "And _you're_ a Substitute Shinigami?" Naruto squinted his eyes and looked long and hard at Ichigo, "Okay, I'll play along. Where's the real Shinigami then, because you look like some schoolkid." Naruto then dodged a punch from Ichigo, "A schoolkid with a temper problem. And if you must know and we're all telling each other our occupations here, I'm something of a drifter. A travelling sage if you will."

Uryuu looked at Naruto in a scrutinizing manner, "A sage? You don't look like any sage I've ever heard of or seen."

"Well how many have you ever seen in person?" Naruto fired back with a dry look on his face, "Let's see, you probably expected an old man peddling charms or something right?" He got a nod from both Uryuu and Ichigo, "That's a stereotype, and stereotyping is wrong. I simply roam about doing good deeds and seeing the world, doing what I can to make money and whatnot."

Ichigo pointed at him, "You just said you don't peddle charms."

"I don't." Naruto admitted.

"Then how do you make money?" Ichigo wondered, "You don't look like you can do anyth-. What's this?" He said as Naruto held an orange book out in front of him that Uryuu took to inspect.

"How I make my money." Naruto said proudly, "Yep, my sensei wrote those. I republished them and then wrote follow-ups. You can keep that one if you want." The book then connected off of Naruto's face.

Ichigo's arm was still extended from the throw while Uryuu was turned away to hide his undignified blush, "You wrote that crap?" He roared furiously, "My dad tried to get me to read that smut while he was trying to teach me all of that 'birds and the bees' crap! He said it would explain everything I needed to know!"

"And did it?" Naruto asked him, rubbing his face where the book had hit him.

"I didn't ever need to know that people were capable of some of that stuff!" Ichigo said, having flashbacks to the things he read.

Naruto nodded wisely, "Well I am a sage. I have a lot of knowledge on a lot of subjects and that just happened to be one. But those Hollow things… I would rather not have to deal with them again. I've been seeing ghosts for years and I've never had to fight with those things before." Naruto's stomach abruptly growled, "Ugh… I haven't eaten in an entire day. I guess I'll catch you around 'Shinigami' Ichigo and random guy with glasses."

Ichigo tried to move to stop him, "Hey wait, if you're not a Shinigami or a Quincy then what-?" Naruto suddenly vanished in a whirlwind of leaves, "-Are you?" He looked where Naruto had been standing before he suddenly lost his balance and fell to the ground, "W-What's happening?" Ichigo asked as his sword started changing shape.

Uryuu stared at the sword, 'The Zanpakutou is changing shape? No, damn it I can feel the power from here rushing into me without me even touching it and it's stronger than before! It's going to explode!'

Uryuu began firing arrows into the sky, 'I have to take Ichigo's power and stabilize it before giving it back to him until he can calm himself.'

Ichigo watched Uryuu take his power and fire off shot after shot, eventually his arm holding the bow started to break down from the stress put on it by overuse, "Hey what are you doing?" Ichigo asked him, "I know what you want to do, but don't overdo it, you'll lose your arm."

"Shut up Kurosaki!" Uryuu yelled as he continued firing arrows, one after another, "I told you already that I hate the Shinigami! And you said it yourself; if we don't live then we won't be able to fight. So you'd better live so that I can beat you!"

XxX

Rukia dropped to her knees after watching the events that had transpired today, "A Menos appeared and was defeated. Ichigo actually did a great job."

Urahara nodded in agreement, "Yes, but that other guy that showed up is a strange one. I don't know quite what to make of him." He said to Rukia as a black cat came nearby and made eye-contact with him. He grinned and pulled out a fan that he waved in front of his face, "Oh well, I guess it really doesn't matter right now. Right now I've got to fix that gigantic crack in the sky. I mean look at that thing, it's huge! All I do is own a candy shop, and I'm expected to fix this mess?"

Rukia sweatdropped and walked away from Urahara to go find Ichigo.

XxX

Naruto let out a sigh of comfort as he lay down on his hotel bed after a shower, "Man I didn't expect to get into a fight today… Maybe I should take that as a sign and move along faster than usual. Too bad though, I kind of like this place. If it weren't for the Hollow monsters that seem to swarm this place and the fake-Shinigami I'd say this place is pretty cool."

*meow*

Naruto turned his head towards an open window where he saw the same black cat from earlier standing on the sill, looking at him intently, "Well hey there. I have no idea how you found me or why you would look for me but feel free to hang out for as long as you want." He laid down on his back and looked up at the ceiling, "I've got absolutely nothing important going on and I like animals."

The cat hopped down off of the sill and made its way over to Naruto's bed where it hopped up and lay down right next to him, "Very, very long day." He said to the cat and himself as his eyes began to close.

"I can see how you would think that. Still, you did quite well."

Naruto's eyes slowly opened at the sound of the deep voice inside of the room. His eyes looked around before settling on the cat next to him that had a single eye open, "Okay, I didn't sense anyone else enter this room and no one has properly snuck up on me in forever. I also don't sense any ill intent from you, so I'm going to say that you were the one that just said that."

The cat's eye rose as if it was questioning his sanity, "You don't seem surprised that a cat spoke to you." It said in the deep voice that he had heard, confirming his theory.

Naruto scratched his nose, "You aren't the first talking animal I've seen before, and the fact that you didn't try to slice me up or eat me alive before you said anything makes you cool with me. Like I said, I like animals." He finished, scratching the cat behind its ears, "So do you have a name talking cat, and what can I do for you today? If you think I can help then your resident travelling sage Uzumaki Naruto is at your service."

The cat got up and jumped onto his chest, "I wasn't aware that one of the abilities of a human sage was the ability to see and slay Hollows."

"I'm special." Naruto said with a grin.

"Well then." The cat said, "Urahara was only focusing on the humans that were around that Kurosaki kid. I know why he did, but he almost missed a diamond in the rough in you. My name is Yoruichi by the way."

Naruto nodded, committing the name to memory, how couldn't he? It wasn't like he met talking cats everywhere he went, especially these days, "Well then Yoruichi, you said something about me being a diamond in the rough. For what?"

"Tell me." Yoruichi said, "You didn't seem to really know what you were doing or what you were fighting, but you were neither surprised, nor caught off-guard when it came to the fighting itself. Do you know what you did?"

"Do you?" Naruto asked back, allowing Yoruichi to jump off of him so that he could sit up, "But I'll tell you what I did. I used something that humans don't acknowledge anymore called chakra… well not really chakra, one part of chakra. The spiritual half, yin chakra."

"Chakra?" Yoruichi said calmly. The cat sounded like it wanted to dispute him, but hearing that he really sounded like he knew what he talking about, prompted the feline to stay quiet and let him talk.

Naruto nodded, "Chakra is the combination of the physical and spiritual energies of the body. Yang chakra would be the physical portion, yin chakra would be the spiritual. I'm so in-tuned with my yin chakra that I could start seeing ghosts. I've never been attacked by a Hollow until today though, but I am very skilled at fighting. Not so much with just the yin chakra though."

'He's never been attacked by a Hollow before?' Yoruichi thought in disbelief, 'Then how does he know how to fight them?' "Well I have to tell you that what you call 'yin chakra' has a name. It's called Reiryoku."

Naruto took that information in with a smile, "Reiryoku, got it. I've been waiting forever to hear someone else come up with a name for yin chakra. They already renamed yang chakra. Ki is the most common name for that. But sorry, you were talking, keep going."

"Thank you." Yoruichi said before continuing, "But I have to say. You claim to be intuned with your Reiryoku but you don't exactly know how to use it?" Naruto nodded, "However that one attack you used on the Menos was incredible for one such as you." Yoruichi saw him giving a deer-in-the-headlights look and gave him a deadpan look in return, "The giant Hollow from the park." Yoruichi let off a sweatdrop once his face registered the reference and gave a thumbs-up, "Anyway… The amount of energy output from that one attack was staggering. You used just as much Reiryoku as a lieutenant and you seemed to be in incredible control of it."

"Lieutenant?" Naruto said in a puzzled manner, "Lieutenant of what?"

"Oh." Yoruichi replied, embarrassed at the slip, "A lieutenant level Shinigami. That's a very strong level." Naruto was now giving the cat a squinted-eyes look, "Oh now what's with that face? That was a compliment."

Naruto stared the cat down before scratching his cheek, "This isn't the first time I've heard this Shinigami stuff you know. Earlier today some kid with orange hair and a big-ass sword said he was a _Substitute_ Shinigami, and now you're talking about levels of Shinigami. All of this implies that there's more than one Shinigami, and I only know of one." He looked around his room, lifting pillows and checking his lampshade, "Am I being Punk'd? Do they even have that in this country?"

Yoruichi watched the blonde dart about, looking for hidden cameras, for a few minutes before finally speaking to him with the utmost seriousness, "So how much do you actually want to know?" Yoruichi's words stopped Naruto as he dug through the drawer provided by the hotel so that he could look at the cat, "It sounds like I'm giving you a choice, but you can't just select and choose in this instance. You're already involved. You have been ever since you killed your first Hollow here. Even if you don't want to know anymore, even if you don't want to listen to another word I have to say you're already involved."

By now, Naruto was returning the hardened look that Yoruichi was giving him, something that surprised the cat greatly but did not stop the lecture, "All that's left is to deny it or embrace it, because you Uzumaki Naruto are spiritually aware, and there's nothing you can do about that now. Now you can either listen to what I have to say and accept everything that comes with it, or turn away from it, and everything that you would have found out about will still happen around you, you just won't be prepared for any of it. So will you listen, or will you send this poor helpless kitty cat out into the cold, cold night?" A sweatdrop formed on Naruto's head as Yoruichi made it quite clear that the serious moment was over.

Naruto stood, stroking his chin in thought before pacing back and forth, "Okay, let's weight the positives against the negatives here. Negatives would be; me getting into something that I have no earthly business learning anything about, me having to probably fight a ton more of those Hollow things, me probably having to stay around here until you say I can leave once I start getting involved, me making really strong enemies; something that I've done a very good job of avoiding for a long time mind you, and me having to… ugh… learn." He let out a gulp of fear.

"The positives?" Yoruichi asked him amusedly.

Naruto grinned at the cat and started listing things off on his fingers, "Positives; I was very bored until today, I'm a nosy bastard so I actually _do_ want to know this stuff, I'll probably have to fight more of those Hollow things _anyway_ no matter how I feel about it so knowing more about what they are exactly would be great, I'll have to stay around here but on the other hand I've been very lonely for a long time and you seem like entertaining company so I don't think I'll mind setting up shop for the time being." He saw Yoruichi give him a toothy grin in response, "I haven't had a good fight in who knows how long, and the enemies I seem to attract… well existence by and large would be better without them."

"So what do you think?" Yoruichi asked him, trying to hide excitement poorly.

Naruto gave Yoruichi a grave look that seemed to unnerve the feline slightly, "What do I think? A cat comes up to me and tries to intimidate/reason me into something weird like this and you want to know what I think? I think…" He said ominously before breaking into another grin, "I'm in!" He extended his hand to Yoruichi who placed a paw in it so that they could shake.

Yoruichi hopped down from the bed after the hand/paw shake was complete, "Alright then. If you are really 'in' as you say, then I'll find you to get started later at some point. Well now that that's settled, it has been a long day like you said before and I would like to clean myself."

Naruto blinked in confusion. Didn't cats usually just lick themselves and leave it at that? Well Yoruichi could talk like a human and he knew other creatures that bathed like humans, so why not? "Um…" He replied in an unsure fashion as he walked over to his travel bag, going through his things, "Go ahead. Do you need anything? Or do you need me to help you out?" He asked, trying to be helpful.

"No, that's not really necessary."

Naruto's eyes snapped wide open at the sound of a female voice filling his room. But he never felt Yoruichi's presence leave, nor did he feel anyone else enter the room. What the hell? He turned around and got an eyeful of a dark-skinned woman with long-purple hair walking into his bathroom. Oh, and she was naked as well.

Yoruichi looked over 'her' shoulder from the door at Naruto who had his jaw hanging quite slacked at what he was seeing, "Oh, in case you didn't know, I'm a woman. Good to know right?" She laughed when she saw Naruto nod dumbly, unable to take his eyes off of her, "Thanks for the use of the shower Naruto-_kun_." She said in a teasing manner. Naruto simply gave her a half-hearted thumbs up while still staring at her. She shut the door behind herself and turned the shower on, 'Yes, Urahara might have found all of Ichigo's friends, but I've got myself an ace-in-the-hole.'

Naruto stood staring at his bathroom door as the sound of water ran freely, letting him know this was definitely not a dream. It wasn't the transforming thing that shocked him, he could do that stuff himself. It was the fact that she transformed in front of him naked. Needless to say… it had been a long time for Naruto in a certain department.

He wordlessly reached down into his bag and pulled out a notepad before quickly scribbling down what he had seen inside of it, "This is going to sell me a million freaking copies, I swear to Kami. Hot cat-woman sneaking into the protagonist's hotel room for such and such… Man I can see why Ero-sennin did this. This stuff writes itself." A small trickle of blood came from his nose.

XxX

_My name is Uzumaki Naruto. _

_Age: I forget. _

_Hometown: Konohagakure no Sato. Never heard of it? Don't worry about it, I can guarantee that you've never heard of it. It would scare me if you actually _have_._

_Likes: Ramen, finding something cool to do, pulling pranks, coming up with cool new aliases to use, seeing if any of my old aliases are famous for anything, protecting the weak, the spots of true untainted nature that I can still find these days, freaking people out with any of my jutsu, and orange._

_Dislikes: The time it takes to cook ramen (I mean you'd think by now they would have fixed that and made it instantaneous right?), fresh vegetables, people with superior attitudes for no reason, bigots… and I think spirits and overall spiritual things are starting to make their way onto this list. Shinigami, Hollows, pluses… whatever you want to call them._

_Yeah, they're definitely working their way onto the list._

_My name is Uzumaki Naruto, and I have no idea what the hell is going on. After being alive for hundreds of years, learning everything I could about life and coming to terms with all of it I am certain that I'm about to find out that I now know only one thing for sure._

_For all I've seen and done, for all my knowledge and experience about __life__, I don't know shit about __death__. Believe it._

…_Goddamn it, I thought I'd fixed that by now._

_

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_

**Chapter complete. If you don't know, I started from the point where Uryuu challenged Ichigo if you needed a reference point. Now for the record this will not be a Naruto super-fic. He has no idea what the hell is going on and is just about to find out this stuff for himself. Any questions that do not pertain to spoilers? I will answer them or attempt to answer them for you.**

**I have certain parts of this planned out way in advance inside of my head and I know what I want to do with certain areas of the story. Let's give this one a shot.**

**Now if you'll excuse me, it's 8 o'clock. Time for me to get busy. Kenchi out.**


	2. I Ain't Afraid of No Ghosts

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. I want Kishimoto or Kube to come back as ghosts and help me write my own award-winning money grossing manga that will get me rubberband bank. Or are they just going to take all of that knowledge and experience to the grave? That's not fair for stupid people like me.

**Chapter 2: I Ain't Afraid of No Ghosts**

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Naruto found himself wandering about Karakura Town, wondering when Yoruichi was going to find him. It had only been a few days since Naruto arrived abruptly in town and ended up thrown directly into the gigantic battle royale with the Hollows, and he hadn't seen hide nor hair of Yoruichi since she had found her way into his hotel room and gave him a memory he was certain he wasn't going to lose for quite some time. She said she was going to explain all of this stuff to him but so far the only thing he understood was what he deduced for himself; that Hollows were just violent ghosts that ate people's souls and wanted him dead in particular because people that could see sprits were apparently something of a delicacy to a them. How fun.

So here he was trying to explore what he expected to be his new stomping grounds for the time being. It was a nice day, he had a full stomach from the breakfast that was served at his hotel, and he was looking for something to occupy his time until he could find Yoruichi again. For a woman that was so hot she sure was hard to find. Maybe the part about her keeping a transformation as a black cat was what made it so hard? His clones had been all over the town looking for her and didn't find anything.

"Hey kid!" Naruto heard a shout coming from behind him, "Yeah, you! Blondie! You're the only blonde guy out here so you know I'm talking to you!" Naruto looked around and saw the people on the street staring at him. He sincerely hoped that one of those gangs he had been ignoring and laughing in his head at didn't want to make a scene.

"You called for me?" Naruto asked as he turned around and came face to face with a police officer, "Can I help you?"

The cop looked at Naruto sternly, confusing him greatly. Naruto hadn't done anything since coming to Karakura Town… well anything illegal… well anything illegal that anyone could actually prove. He wasn't sure if waging a pitched battle in the middle of town with a gigantic monster was illegal or not but he was sure it wasn't, and besides, most people couldn't even see it so he was sure he was covered on that front. Hell, he hadn't even jaywalked, and the temptation to jump over the traffic instead of waiting for the light to turn ate at him regularly. As far as he could see he was a law abiding citizen.

"What are you doing?" The cop asked Naruto.

Naruto looked around as if he would see the answer in the air before shrugging in defeat, "I don't know. What am I doing officer?"

The man narrowed his eyes at Naruto and pointed to the side, across the street at a high school, "You're supposed to be in there. If you're going to skip school, don't walk in front of the school you're supposed to be attending." Naruto's eyes widened in understanding as he pulled out his wallet and handed over an ID, trying to work his way out of this pickle… and it would have worked if he had actually been paying better attention and been more careful when making his most recent ID for the country he was in, "Alright kid, get in there."

Naruto's jaw dropped, "What? Why?"

"You can't just ditch when you feel like it. Now get in there already." The officer started pushing Naruto across the street. Naruto was too stunned to even offer any defense against what was happening. He looked at his ID and felt like slapping himself. Not only did he set his birthdate so that he was under the age of 18, he also registered himself as a high-school student. Not a home-schooled person as was his usual out when he had prolonged stays in Japan.

Naruto was mentally kicking his own ass as he was walked inside the building, 'Damn! I should have just started speaking English! People think I'm American all the time, he would have thought I was a tourist!' School truly held no purpose for Naruto.

Language courses? Naruto knew every language that was useful to him, he needed them to freely move around.

History? He had been around for everything important enough to actually remember so what good would that class do him?

Math? Well… who needed math? As long as he could do basic stuff who cared about anything else? He could still count all of those zeroes on his check that he got for repeatedly selling his books. How many accounts did he have again? Man he needed to check all of those things… with the money he had in there he knew he would have gotten some kickass interest and there was never-.

"Okay kid, get dressed in this uniform. You've missed enough class." The officer said, throwing a uniform at Naruto after pushing him into the bathroom.

"Don't you have crimes to stop or something?" Naruto cried indignantly, "I don't want to be here!"

The officer shook his head, "Sorry kid, I'm a truant officer it's my job, now what's your schedule?"

"I don't have one damn it!" Naruto cried, changing into his uniform for some reason that he couldn't understand, maybe because he couldn't really substitute himself with a clone and escape without blowing his cover. The last time people figured out he could use chakra… well let's just say he hadn't run that fast in a long time.

"You never even showed up to school to get your schedule? How irresponsible." He cried grabbing Naruto's arm after Naruto finished changing and stuffed his clothes in his bag, "Come on, I know where you should go with kids in your grade. You look about 16."

Naruto was visibly crying now. When he wanted something to do he meant something fun. School was not fun, hell the Shinobi Academy in Konoha was more fun than the schools that popped up throughout history after his era ended, and students had to stay in the system longer as well, and he wasn't even going to get started on college, 'I'm not 16 you asshole I'm-. Wait. How old am I? Damn… okay let's see, 16 multiplied by-.' He thought to himself before a door was slid open and he was tossed inside.

Naruto landed on his face in front of a desk at the head of the class as the officer dusted off his hands, "Sorry for interrupting your class Ochi-sensei, but I caught this kid skipping and he doesn't even know what class he's in. I thought I could drop him here until I spoke with the principal about him."

A young woman turned from the chalkboard, looking at Naruto who was glaring at the officer and muttering what she assumed were curses under his breath, "That's okay Officer Honda. I can keep him here for the time being." She smiled at Naruto, "Who knows, he might even be in my class to begin with?" Naruto rolled his eyes and stood up off of the floor, "Why don't you introduce yourself to the class."

Naruo finished dusting himself off and coughed into his hand to salvage what little dignity he had left, "My name is Uzumaki Naruto. Nice to meet you."

One rather loud boy with shoulder length brown hair looked at Naruto, "Is that it? Come on man, you've got to tell us more than that, like how old are you, or where are you from? Or what's with those marks on your cheeks? Are they tattoos?"

Naruto looked at someone shush the boy that was identified as Keigo and decided to humor him, "Fine. I'm as old as all of you think I am. The marks on my cheeks aren't tattoos they're birthmarks, who the hell tattoos whiskers on their cheeks by the way? And my hometown? I'm from a little town called None-of-your-goddamn-business." A ruler smacked the side of his head abruptly, "Ow." He said dully.

"Okay Uzumaki-san take a seat." Ochi-sensei said to him, a tick mark on the side of her head at his use of vulgar language, "That seat in the corner is vacant."

Naruto shot an okay sign to the teacher and quickly made his way to his seat to allow her to continue teaching. He of course did not pay attention to a single word she said as after this was all over he would never be caught within a square mile of this school again, instead he chose to look around the class and imagine his surprise when he saw two very familiar people. Two of the three people he had actually met while in Karakura Town, Ichigo and… kid with the glasses whose name he never got.

Ichigo of course had easily registered his presence and had been looking at him alongside a smaller girl with black hair that was sitting next to him, on the other hand Uryuu was trying to ignore him and failing miserably in the process. Naruto waved cheekily at Ichigo getting a sweatdrop out of him and the girl next to him before they turned back around, leaving him to his own devices.

"Uzumaki-san." Naruto's attention was directed towards the board before he could attempt to find an opening to switch places with a clone and leave. Everybody kept looking at him and he couldn't find time to make a quick clone, let alone cause enough of a distraction to use it as his decoy, "Could you translate the sentence on the board?"

Naruto looked at the sentence intended and squinted at it, "To what?" His question got a round of laughs from around the class, pissing him off somewhat. That was a legitimate question, he didn't know what class this was.

"To English… please translate it if you would." Naruto could tell that he was starting to upset the teacher by being so belligerent and decided to comply, it wasn't her fault he was stuck there, she was just doing her job.

He nodded and looked at the board before flawlessly speaking in some dialect that no one had ever heard before. After realizing what he had said he slapped his hand to his mouth, 'Crap! That was _Old_ English! Stupid shifting vernacular, pick an exact dialect and stick with it!' He laughed nervously and attempted again, "I mean: **It would be a good idea to go on a nice trip today.**"

Ochi-sensei stared at him for a moment with a questioningly tilted eyebrow before letting it slide. He did answer the question after all, "Very good Uzumaki-san. Even though you haven't been in school you show a good amount of grasp on the language."

Having dodged a bullet of sorts for the time being, Naruto decided that if he wasn't going to be doing anything anyway he might as well be doing a form of nothing that was useful to him. Making himself completely still and drowning out everything around him he began to meditate and try to get more in touch with Karakura Town's natural energy. It didn't help much against the Hollows until he started using yin chakra and needed a knockout punch, but now that he knew what worked he could begin finding ways to develop variants to use it. How he was going to do that was anyone's guess, but he made a living off of pulling off things that people didn't think were possible.

A loud ringing of a bell stirred him from his trance and as the students filed out of the room he noticed one thing about school that might actually make him come back in the near future. Those school uniforms for girls could be a fantastic source of 'research'. Naruto then smirked to himself. He was all alone in the room and had a chance now. Making a quick clone and giving it marching orders to continue with what he was doing… or, more importantly, gather some 'research' if the opportunity presented itself, he opened the window and jumped out, escaping Karakura High School with not a second thought.

XxX

(Hours Later – Sunset)

After changing back into his street clothes, Naruto took to keeping to the rooftops of the town so that he didn't get pulled aside by another truant officer out busting students or any person his 'age' that looked like they should have been in school.

For Naruto, the next bit of business he had to address was where he was going to train for the duration of his stay in Karakura Town. If he was going to be doing all of this Hollow fighting he needed to learn how to actually fight them. He wasn't simple enough to believe that every time something like that giant Hollow he, Ichigo, and Uryuu put down the other day showed up he could just solve everything with a Rasengan and that would be that, nor did he believe that the Hollow they fought was as strong as they got, because let's face it, his luck was simply not that good.

The other day while looking for Yoruichi with his Kage Bunshin they stumbled upon a rather promising spot that he was heading over to check out. As he arrived he looked around. He found himself in an old graveyard. It worked for him because it was at the edge of town and upon closer inspection it was perfect for him. The last person buried there had been placed there over fifty years ago, meaning that pretty much no one was going to come around to bother him around there.

Finding a clearing nearby after a short walk through a forest so that he didn't end up disturbing the graves, he stood around taking in his surroundings, "Okay… yin chakra, or Reiryoku, or whatever I'm supposed to call it these days. I know what it feels like specifically." Naruto said as he channeled some to his hand. Were anyone else other than those that were spiritually aware watching they would have seen nothing, but to Naruto it appeared as if his hand was covered in a white ethereal glow, "Now chakra is half this stuff and half physical energy. I can hit Hollows with my ninjutsu, but it doesn't hurt them like it would a living creature." He said quietly to himself as if he were trying to explain a theory to himself.

"It should hurt a Shinigami though."

Naruto smirked at the sound of Yoruichi's voice, "Ha, I knew you were coming this time. No sneaking up on me today." He said, turning around to face the golden-eyed woman who much to both his pleasure and disappointment was clothed this time. Her purple hair was done up in a ponytail and she wore an orange shirt with two straps over the shoulders, a black shirt underneath that he could see through the neckline of her first shirt, a large beige sash around her waist, tight black pants, long beige wrist warmers, long beige leg warmers, and light brown shoes.

Yoruichi walked up to Naruto with a smirk on her face, "I wasn't trying this time though, was I?"

Naruto shook his head, "Maybe, but the fact remains, it has been a long, long time since anyone has successfully gotten the drop on Uzumaki Naruto." He pointed at a nearby tree at the edge of the clearing, "I'm also never alone."

Yoruichi followed where he was pointing to see another Naruto pop out of the top of the tree and wave at her before disappearing in a puff of smoke. She looked at him appraisingly, "You have very interesting powers."

Naruto grinned at her before he let it slip, "Maybe to humans. But to spirits I only have one move that I know for sure will work."

Yoruichi shook her head, "You don't know that for sure, and there's only one way to find out for yourself. You need to find a Shinigami and fight one."

Naruto gave her a dry look, "Yes because I'm so looking forward to facing off against the embodiments of death." He said sarcastically, "Despite a tumultuous and violent start to my life the vast majority of it has been rather peaceful and I like that. I really don't feel like going and picking a fight with the only things that I think would be up to the task of killing me. Maybe I can see if that Ichigo kid wants to go a few rounds so I can find out, but other than that I would rather not."

"Who said Ichigo was the only Shinigami you knew?" Naruto looked at Yoruichi who was grinning like the cat who swallowed the canary, "You seem like you're pretty confident in yourself as a warrior. Why do you think you wouldn't be able to match a Shinigami?"

"Because even the strongest shinobi that I grew up around in my time feared and respected the power of the Shinigami." Naruto said, slightly on edge now that he knew Yoruichi was a Shinigami, "Even if you guys aren't really the one we thought you were you still carry the name of the harbinger of death. And you can't run away from death… No matter how strong you are or no matter how long you've lived. If you guys really are Shinigami then I think there's a reason that I'm meeting you now." He let out a sigh, "I guess my ticket's finally up huh?"

Yoruichi blinked and tilted her head to the side. What was he talking about, "What do you mean? You think I'm going to kill you?"

Naruto nodded before lowering his head, "Aren't you? I mean I know what you are, and here we are in the middle of nowhere. I'm not really scared or anything, I've lived long enough, but can you make it not hurt please?"

"You think-? You've lived-?" Yoruichi was truly confused by what he was talking about, "You're so stupid!" Yoruichi said before slamming her fist into the side of his face.

Now she really didn't look it, but Yoruichi hit hard. Very hard. He hadn't been hit nearly that hard in an uncountable number of years and almost forgot how to take a punch like that and get up, but some things you never forget, and good fighters never forget things like that. Naruto peeled himself off of the side of the tree his spine had compressed against and wiped his bloody lip, looking at Yoruichi who seemed angry at him, "What the hell was that for?"

Yoruichi shouted back at him, "What the hell do you mean? You're talking like you _want_ to die or something! I'm not going to kill you idiot, I never was! I'm not an active Shinigami in the Gotei 13!"

'The what?' Naruto stored that name in the back of his head to ask about later, "Well if you're not here to kill me then what do you want with me?"

"I'm going to need your help soon." Yoruichi admitted, "But first we need to talk. What do you mean you've lived long enough? You're still a kid."

Naruto laughed nervously, "Not really. I'm older than I look."

"So you're not 16?" Yoruichi could see that. She had seen tons of people that aged gracefully in the realm of the living in her lifetime, "So how old are you 30?"

Naruto shook his head, starting to be entertained by this, "Start multiplying."

Yoruichi narrowed her eyes, "I thought you said you weren't a Shinigami."

Naruto shrugged, "I didn't lie, I'm not. I'm immortal." He saw her looking at him as if he was lying to her face, "It's very complicated. I have a very potent life force, mixed with being completely in-tune with nature on a symbiotic level, mixed with the greatest immune system ever conceived and regenerative powers, mixed with having an all-powerful being stuck inside of me sleeping peacefully. All of those things combined made me unable to die by natural causes."

Yoruichi couldn't find a hint of a lie or humor in anything he said, he was completely serious, "So how old are you?"

Naruto grinned at her, "How old are you?"

"I don't feel comfortable answering that to you Naruto-ojiisan." Yoruichi replied rather passively.

Naruto dug into his ear unreceptively, "Meh. Whatever you say Yoruichi-obaachan." He felt Yoruichi stiffen in offense at what he called her, "Hey, I don't know for sure how old you are so why can you call me that and I can't do the same? I'm pretty sure Shinigami don't die so who knows how old you are."

Yoruichi's eyes shone over in rage, "I'm not that old, I'm only-!" She stopped as soon as she saw the teasing smirk on Naruto's face and calmed herself, "And Shinigami do die, they just live far longer than humans do."

Naruto quirked an eyebrow, "How do spirits die? What happens after they die?" He suddenly started waving his hands, "Actually nevermind, I don't want to know. I haven't even died _once_ yet. I don't need to find out too much before my time comes, that's bad luck."

"You'll think otherwise sooner rather than later. Well anyway, I'm going to be kicking your ass all day today." Yoruichi said with a wide grin.

"What?" Naruto didn't want to fight Yoruichi. There were other physical things that he felt himself wanting to do with her, but fighting wasn't one of them. I mean one of them might get hurt doing what he wanted to do, but it would have been the good kind of hurt, "Why?"

Yoruichi placed her hands on her hips, "Because I don't know what your powers are and I need you to be ready for battle soon. Very soon. You're going to be my secret weapon and I want to make sure you're ready. I want to know exactly what you're capable of so that I know how to train you. Now get ready." She said with a smile, getting into a ready stance.

Naruto backed up defensively, "Wait, don't I get a choice in this?"

"Nope!" Yoruichi chirped happily before blurring out of Naruto's sight.

'Shit, she's the fastest person I've seen in forever!' Was the thought that snapped through Naruto's head like a lightning bolt as he set himself up to block a kick from Yoruichi with his right forearm, 'Fuck, that hurt! What's she made of, diamonds?'

"You blocked my kick." Yoruichi said, grinning at the prospect of possibly using more skill than she thought she would need for this fight, "You either have very good reflexes, are very fast… or both."

Naruto found a way to grin back through the throbbing pain in his arm, it didn't matter though, in a few seconds it would be as good as new, "I'm the fastest man alive Yoruichi." He threw her off of his arm, "And I would say that my reflexes suck because I'm always taking more damage than I should." With that, he blurred from her sight, getting a pleased laugh from her before she did the same to match him.

As the two clashed repeatedly all over the field they realized something about the other.

Yoruichi found that Naruto was incredibly talented in hand-to-hand. Despite not being trained in Hakuda she found he was gleefully matching her hit for hit all across the board. She was never able to get him with any feints and she was almost caught a few times by him due to his attacking from seemingly unpredictable angles with wild, but seemingly intended patterns.

Naruto blocked another high kick from Yoruichi and tried pulling her towards him to disrupt her balance until she jumped towards him and kicked with her free leg, forcing him to let go of her other one to block that one. The force of the attack drove him back and let Yoruichi land on her feet safely before coming at him with another attack of her own.

Naruto's strategy devolved into him using his own speed to make her miss him when she attacked because as fast as she was, she wasn't that much faster than him and when moving that fast one would get tunnel vision. As long as he didn't directly engage her and was fast enough to avoid her he could eventually wear her down.

Naruto despite not being a hand to hand savant while he had been a shinobi had lived for enough lifetimes to soak up experience fighting against more styles of combat than anyone else, period. He even ran through a phase where he would travel around challenging dojos and fighting schools just for kicks. He later slapped himself a few years back. If he had waited he could have made quite a bit of money off of fighting, but he didn't need to be that kind of famous.

The point was, because he used it more than any other aspect of his abilities and because of centuries of harnessing his skills through one way or another, Naruto could safely say that his skill with Taijutsu was neck and neck with his skill in Ninjutsu.

Yoruichi watched Naruto slip her attacks and evade her. Even when she was subconsciously stepping up her speed, 'How does a regular human get so fast? I've never heard of anything like this in my entire life! I actually have to start stepping it up here.' She thought when she felt the air from one of Naruto's counter punches rip past her head.

Naruto doubled over when Yoruichi deposited her elbow into his belly. Before he could retaliate he ended up taking a hard kick to the side of his head, sending him tumbling along the ground, 'What the fuck just happened? Did she flip a switch or what?'

Yoruichi bent over to look down on Naruto, "The way I was moving so fast is called Shunpo (Flash Steps), a speed technique that a lot of Shinigami know. I haven't used it in quite some while though. No human eye can keep up with it, so don't feel bad. It took me quite a while to actually get you, I had to take more steps to reach you. I guess I'm out of practice."

Naruto spun to his feet with a whirlwind of a kick that got Yoruichi to jump back, "I haven't had to use this in forever. I hope you aren't as rusty as you think you are Yoruichi, because you're not the only one with a speed technique. My dad had one faster than your move, way faster, but I could never master it. I still can't, so I found my own way to outclass people with speed. I never really used it in a fight though, no one was around that needed me to try it on."

Yoruichi's eyes widened, "You're just a human and you can move even faster than this? What kind of mortal are you supposed to be?"

Naruto wiped the scuff marks off of his face, "How good of an eye do the Shinigami keep watch on the world?"

Yoruichi felt no harm in answering his question, "We're not gods. We simply keep the balance of souls by escorting those that have trouble passing on to the Soul Society as well as protect the world of the living from Hollows. We don't interfere anything unless it would disrupt the balance of souls, but that hasn't happened on a wide-scale in about 1200 years, most of the time the problems solved themselves. The last potential event, not counting the Quincy incident 200 years ago, occurred over 500 years ago and was solved before anyone could even begin to mobilize anything to check it out."

Naruto laughed, "Yeah, because I was the one that solved them! I've been the one settling all of that stuff Yoruichi! And the older I got the better I became at handling mortal business, it's clockwork now for me! You Shinigami need to be paying me a retainer! I've been doing your job since I was sixteen! Hell if that's part of your job then I might as well be a Shinigami myself!"

Yoruichi gaped at him before snapping at him angrily, "Damn it, how old are you? You're being really cryptic and anal about this!"

Naruto chuckled, "Why don't cut me open and count the rings? You'll be here all day. I've always been there. Doing my best to keep the peace or at the very least help peace along from the shadows. Do you want an example? I'll give you a recent one."

Yoruichi nodded, "If you would, because I have a hard time believing that one man governed the affairs of the entire world."

Naruto smirked, "Fine, during World War II, or as I like to call it, 'the big-ass violent waste of my time and effort', stuff kept happening to fighter airplanes and bombers. Stuff no one could explain. If it was going to end too many lives on one side or another and I knew about it I or a clone of mine would be there to stop it with sabotage. The British called the accidents the work of 'gremlins'." He then looked away, "I couldn't do everything though… if I knew about atomic weapons beforehand those plans would have been lost forever. You say Shinigami aren't gods… well neither am I. I've been getting reminders again and again of that fact. I might as well not be here the way things still are, for everything I stop five more problems pop up and people keep going about killing each other."

Yoruichi could see the sorrow in his eyes at this fact. If what he said was true then not only was he an incredible hero for doing what he could for the world he had also seen firsthand the most horrible tragedies and losses of life mortals could muster. How his eyes still seemed so bright and exuberant after such a grim existence was beyond her. And once again, just like that, his eyes brightened up once they locked with hers again.

"Come on Yoruichi, I'm starting to feel loosened up! Use me to get yourself back up to snuff, I can take it. Because I have to do it too, I haven't had a fight against someone that could kick my ass in centuries!" He gestured for her to bring it on, "Go as fast as you think you can handle."

"That's not a good idea." She said apprehensively, "You're way stronger than I figured you for, but if I started going all out against you I don't think you would last too long."

"Fine." Naruto said, getting her to calm down. He saw there was no need for a full-scale fight, "Then I'll just make you change that tune." Crap. He was bluffing right? "Let's see how fast you really are kitty-cat, I hope you like this because it took me a few hundreds of years to learn how to do it! Check out Swift Release, Jinton: Mueishou (Swift Release: Shadowless Flight)!"

Naruto's body vanished in an afterimage before Yoruichi felt a sharp pain in her stomach that sent her sliding back until she grounded her feet into the soil, stopping herself. Naruto stood back in front of her, "Okay, I get the point. No more taking it easy on you, but I'm still faster than you."

Naruto blurred from sight again as his voice echoed all around her, "Show me then."

Yoruichi laughed as she felt her fingers twitch in anticipation, "I'm the greatest Hohou (Fast Movement) user in the Soul Society. Do you really think I can't keep up? I'm insulted."

"Don't be insulted."

A multitude of voices said before many blurs flew from the trees surrounding them. Yoruichi was wondering if Naruto was really just that fast enough to have multiple after images. She wasn't that fast. She didn't know anyone that fast and it was scary. However she then noticed that each image of Naruto had shadows and smirked, "After seeing you take me on with your techniques I have to say I'm changing my mind about being insulted."

"Come and get us then." The fifty or so Naruto clones around her echoed as one. They soon would wish that they hadn't as many of them were destroyed before they even knew what had hit them. The others lasted just long enough to marvel at how fast Yoruichi could be, as the stationary copies only saw Yoruichi stop long enough in motion _after_ beating a clone with pure physical combat and moving onto the next in less than the blink of an eye.

The field was filled with smoke as she finished beating all of his clones, "I hope the real you wasn't in there because I might have killed you if you were."

Naruto appeared back in front of her with a huge grin on his face, "Okay, you're still faster than me, I was dodging and switching places with my clones all through that and still barely got away. They can't use Swift Release. But I'm not done yet! Let's see how you like this-!" Yoruichi squinted when she saw his eyes turn into a swirl pattern but didn't have time to ask about it, "Banshou Ten'in (Heavenly Attraction of All Creation)!"

Yoruichi felt what was going to happen before it took effect as Naruto stuck his hand out and gestured towards himself. She felt a pull on her body and immediately turned around to get the hell out of dodge, but found herself moving at the speed of a normal human wading through mud.

"Why are you so fucking fast?" Naruto asked himself as he felt her strain against his gravitational attack. He just couldn't reel her in close, "You have so much momentum I can't even pull you towards me an inch!" On the contrary, for all of the chakra he was pumping out just to get his attack to stay active she was actually gaining ground away from him. He eventually let go of Yoruichi and let her dart off so fast he only heard a crack of air and saw nothing, but after hearing the groan of a tree and seeing a heavy footprint on it he could guess what she was going to do next and prepared himself accordingly.

'Come on, how high did you jump? Damn… okay ten seconds… 9, 8, 7, 6-,' He could see a small speck in the sky steadily becoming bigger. Even if he dodged, the amount of force she would generate would destroy the area, and he wasn't having that happen. He didn't feel like looking for a new place to train that had this much nature abound, he liked this place, thus he hunkered down and prepared for the worst, '-5, 4, 3, 2,-,' He could see the intent look on her face as she hurtled from the sky with her leg up and ready for a heel drop, "-1, 0! Shinra Tensei (Heavenly Subjugation of the Omnipresent God)!"

Yoruichi almost lost control when Naruto let her go from his attraction technique, but she quickly recovered and decided to actually use that momentum for something; to kick off of a tree and take him out. If she had just jumped back off of the tree at Naruto it would have given out, so she used it to jump into the air. Even if he moved he would still wind up getting caught with something unless he was a coward and would flee the entire clearing altogether in order to avoid it, and as she guessed, he did not, he simply stood there with a frantic look on his face, as if he were waiting for something.

Then he shouted his attack.

All of Yoruichi's speed and combined momentum clashed with Naruto's outwards gravity attack. How much force did he generate with his maneuver? Well it was incredibly focused, on just her, but the force behind it clashing with the force of her kicking power ended up blowing the tree leaves all about as if they were the center of a hurricane. Any longer and the trees would begin coming out of the ground by their roots.

Yoruichi and Naruto bounced away from one another due to the conflicting forces. Naruto found himself smashed firmly into a human sized hole in the ground, Yoruichi on the other hand was flung high back into the air, tumbling in a corkscrew motion until landing on her feet looking at the hole that Naruto had neatly deposited himself in. She winced sharply as she stodd back up straight from her landing crouch, 'That was really rough on my legs. I can't remember ever kicking anything harder than that, but it was pure gravitational pressure.'

Naruto pulled himself out of the hole slowly, covered in dirt and rocks and staggered slightly on his feet in front of Yoruichi, "I hate using the Rinnegan. It fucking gives me migraines from hell…" His nose started bleeding steadily, "Crap." He said right before vomiting on the ground and dropping to his knees.

Yoruichi ran over to him to find him on all fours breathing heavily, "Are you alright?"

Naruto took multiple deep breaths before looking up at her, the blood from his nose done leaking, "Yeah, fine. I'm just very rusty. I haven't used Swift Release or any of my special Rinnegan techniques in forever. Using the Rinnegan without using Sage Mode is a killer."

"You could have gone further?" Yoruichi asked in a disbelieving voice.

Naruto nodded and sat back on his knees to look at her properly, "You could have too. Don't patronize me. I can see when people are stronger then they want me to see. You did just enough to keep pace with me."

Yoruichi smiled guiltily, "Well I couldn't just start shooting Kidou all over the field. I might just end up killing my secret weapon before I even see what he's capable of. Besides, you don't need to see any of my aces yet, they aren't exactly meant for friendly competition."

"Likewise." Naruto said before rolling over to the side to avoid falling out in his puke, "Kami, I'm so out of shape, the effects of not having your life threatened on a regular basis I assume." He looked up at the sky and the dark sky of nightfall in a tired manner before kicking his legs to his chest and springing to his feet, "Okay, let's keep going. I'm ready when you are."

"We're done." Yoruichi said happily, "We already know that your techniques can work on a Shinigami. Your attacks hurt. And you kept pace with me. Granted that wasn't full speed and I'm out of practice, being in a cat body for 100 years will do that to you, but it was still extremely impressive. All you need is to get back into shape and you're just as strong as I need you to be."

"Wait." Naruto said in response, "That didn't prove anything. All I used on you were my Kage Bunshin which I already knew could hit you as long as they could see you, my hand to hand skills, and a few of my gravity techniques. Everything I used I was sure would work. I still have a laundry list of moves that I'm not sure about, and I don't feel like testing them out in the field just to find out that they crapped out on me."

Yoruichi looked at him thoughtfully, she was amazed that he still had more moves, but the chance of them not working being high was a chance she didn't feel willing to take. She also needed to ensure that he was ready for when the time came and she needed him, which she assumed would be sooner rather than later, "I'll tell you what. Can you meet me somewhere tomorrow?"

Naruto nodded and took a card that she handed him, reading out the words to himself, "Urahara Shop? Hey Yoruichi why do yo-?" He stopped when he looked up and found that she was gone, "Goddamn she's fast. And now it's raining… great." He said to himself as a downpour started. Tucking the card into his pocket and checking around for Yoruichi once more he made a few hand-seals, "Shunshin no Jutsu (Body Flicker Jutsu)." He then vanished in a whirlwind of leaves.

XxX

They came for Rukia. They came for her and it was all his fault. He had to get in her way, he had to take her powers, and now she was in trouble because of it. He couldn't even stop the ones sent to take her. That one guy was so fast… he cut right through him before he even knew what happened. As if he weren't even there.

He wasn't strong enough to save her and now he was going to die.

'No pain…?'

'Damn it, am I really dead? I guess that's why I don't feel any pain.'

'Now that I think about it my body is starting to feel warmer… it's really warm.'

Ichigo opened his eyes to come face-to-face with a large mustachioed man in glasses, "Hmm? Oh you're getting goosebumps, what a relief!"

Ichigo screamed in complete and utter horror and pushed against the man's face as he was hovering over inside of a futon, "Too close! Get out of my face!" The man seemed to ignore Ichigo's discomfort in exchange for calling Urahara in the room, "I know who you are, you're with that Geta-Boushi (Sandals and Hat) guy, so why the hell are you in bed with me?" He eventually shoved him off and sat up, clutching at his body in pain, which he found to be shirtless and bandaged, "Ugh, I'm not dead?"

'How?' He asked himself before looking around, 'Wait, this isn't even my house. Where the hell am I?'

"Well Tessai was right, you're awake. You shouldn't be moving around Ichigo-san. Your injury isn't fully healed." Urahara said to him, a fan open and in front of his face, "If you keep moving around you can die."

Ichigo watched him walk closer, "So I guess this must be your house."

Urahara snapped his fan shut suddenly, "Correct."

"You saved me…" Ichigo said in a dejected manner.

Urahara pointed at himself in a faux offended fashion, "What's with that tone? The way you're talking is like I did something wrong."

Ichigo's attention suddenly snapped to something else as he remembered someone else there at the scene of his defeat, "Wait, Uryuu! Tell me he's alive too, is he here?"

Urahara shook his head, "He's already gone. He lost a lot of blood but his injury wasn't vital. Even if I just left him lying there he wouldn't have died for another two days, so I just treated his injury on the spot." A smirk came to the strange man's face, "Come to think of it, when he left he was worried… worried about you."

Ichigo scoffed as he touched at all of the bandages on his body, "Yeah right."

"It's true." Urahara said off-handedly, "I even told him to rest here for a moment, and do you want to know what he said? 'Thank you for tending to me however I am fine. Instead I believe you should treat Ichigo. The reason being, because right now the only one that can beat those bastards is not me. Please heal Ichigo… because the only one who can save Rukia is him.'"

Ichigo remember Rukia willingly going with them through that strange portal back to her realm, "Feh, only me? What does he expect me to do?" He snapped, "Rukia's already back at the Soul Society, how can I follow her there? How the hell could I rescue her? There's no way!"

Urahara stayed silent and let him get his pent-up frustrations out in one go before he finally decided to speak, "Do you really think that there's no other way to get to the Soul Society?" He asked cryptically.

Ichigo's head snapped in his direction immediately, "There _is_ a way? Tell me how! How do I do it?"

Holding up one finger that stopped him, Urahara began to explain, "Of course I'll tell you, but under one condition. Starting now, for ten days, you're going to be learning how to properly fight with me."

That didn't sit too well with Ichigo at all, "You're telling me to fucking train? I don't have time for that! You don't know when Rukia's going to be executed! I should try getting there as fast as possible!"

Urahara sighed and slammed the tip of his cane onto Ichigo's forehead, driving him back down onto the bedding, "The point I'm trying to make to you here, is that you will die if you go there as you are. There is no maybe, there is no doubt. You will be slaughtered." He said deadly serious, getting a shiver out of Ichigo at his tone, "I let you fight them the last time on purpose. I thought you would get the picture if you fought them and saw for yourself. With your current skill you will die the second they realize what's going on. You're weak. Stop being such a child, saying you're going in to 'rescue Rukia'. Don't use other people as an excuse to go getting yourself killed."

Ichigo saw the utter serious look in Urahara's eyes and heard the edge in his voice when he stood up, letting Ichigo go, "The Soul Society usually gives a month long grace period maximum in a convict's execution, same for Rukia-san. _We_ will be taking ten days, just to mess with you in particular." Ichigo's eye twitched at this goofball still trying to razz him while acting serious, "It will take 7 days to open the door that will take you there, so after you arrive in the Soul Society you still have 13 days. Plenty of time."

Ichigo stayed silent for a long time before finally speaking up, "…Will I really get stronger in just 10 days?"

"Of course." Urahara answered with a sly grin as his bucket hat shaded his eyes, "If you truly want to save Rukia that is. A strong will is stronger than steel. If your determination is anything less than full-bore then don't even bother going. For ten days can you seriously be determined to fight and give it your all?"

Ichigo scratched his head, "Well if I don't do it, no one will." He gave Urahara a determined look, "I guess I don't have a choice, let's give it a try!"

"Excellent!" Urahara said, leaving the room, "We'll start tomorrow. I need to fix up some medicine so that you don't drop dead in the middle of the training, but I do want you to go to school tomorrow as well. It's the last day after all." Not letting Ichigo ask him how he knew that he immediately left the room and walked down the hall.

"So you're going to go ahead and send him?" Yoruichi, in cat form asked him once Urahara walked past her, "You do know that the chances of him pulling this off are slim and none. Don't you?"

Urahara grinned at the cat from behind his fan, "What's the fun in life without taking a few chances every now and then? Besides, he'll do fine with some polish, and we'll do that once I get him his powers back."

"You're going to send those kids with him as well aren't you?" Yoruichi followed up, not missing a beat, "The ones that showed signs of having powers as well."

"The more the merrier." The eccentric shop owner chirped.

Yoruichi smirked, having finally gotten to the crux of what she wanted to talk about, "Well what if I said I felt like going as well?"

"Go ahead!" Urahara replied heartily, "If you're feeling a little homesick you might as well go on and head back for a bit when it's going to be nutty for sure anyway."

"And I wanted to take someone with me?" She added.

At that, Urahara sort of deflated, "I can't go back. You know that the exile won't let me get even close. Old man Yamamoto would burn me to a crisp and lock me away if I showed back up around that place."

"Not you per se." She commented, getting his full attention, "I found someone very interesting that I think the team would benefit from having."

"Benefit how?" Urahara asked.

Yoruichi gave him a grin with her sharp white teeth, "Let's just say that he's my ringer, so to speak."

XxX

(The Next Day – Urahara Shop)

"Why did Yoruichi want me to come here." Naruto said to himself as he stood out in front of the plain looking shop.

"Hey mister, are you going to buy something or are you just going to stand outside looking stupid all day? Loitering is illegal you know?" A young boy with red hair said snottily from the porch of the store.

Naruto gave the kid a dry look, "I don't even know what this place sells, so I don't know yet. Is there someone named Yoruichi around here? This person might be in cat form, for the sake of reference." He said with a completely straight face.

A girl, the boy's age, with black hair and a calm look about her that had been sweeping the porch looked up at him, "Oh, I can go see if they're here mister, just wait for a moment."

Naruto nodded and smiled at the girl, "Thank you very much. Can I get your name sweetheart?"

The girl started walking towards the door to the shop and turned to face him, "My name is Ururu sir, and this is Jinta. I'll be back in a moment. Who are you by the way so that I can relay the message?"

Naruto grinned at her, "Uzumaki Naruto; the immortal sage of toads, balance, and the shinobi arts." Ururu bowed to him quickly and went inside to find someone to help him out, leaving Naruto and Jinta outside by themselves, the small boy glaring at him, "Can I help you kid?"

"You don't look very tough. Or like a sage. Aren't sages old men or something?" Jinta said to Naruto abruptly.

Naruto grinned at him, "Kid I am older than you could possibly imagine. Do not get me started… but you do remind me of someone from a loooong time ago. And I'm tougher than you, that's all that really matters right now."

"You think so huh?" Jinta said before pulling a large kanabou out of seemingly nowhere and swinging it at Naruto, "Jinta Homerun!" He shouted as he felt his attack connect.

"Jinta why are you beating a log to death with your weapon?"

Jinta turned around to see Urahara standing in the doorway with Ururu and Yoruichi in cat-form, "What are you talking about? I hit some stupid blonde guy that kept saying he was a sage." Urahara grinned and pointed. Jinta followed his finger and had his eyes bulge in disbelief when he saw a log that had been smashed up on the ground, "What? But where is the other guy?"

Naruto appeared outside of the shop's property with a grin on his face, "And the next generation of suckers learns the value of the log. Kawarimi no Jutsu (Substitution Jutsu) will never die."

"How did you do that?" Jinta roared at him, "And where did you get the log?"

Naruto walked back over to everyone else, clutching his chest in a vulnerable manner, "The log comes from the heart. When you feel the pull, you just know what it is by instinct and let the log take you to the sweet, sweet sanctuary of safety." He then smirked at Jinta, "And I did it because I can, because I'm awesome, because I'm Uzumaki Naruto, and you'd better recognize that-!"

"Uzumaki Naruto?" Urahara cut him off right there, "Is that really your name?" Naruto looked at him blankly and gave him a nod, prompting Urahara to scream like a girl and run back inside of the store. Naruto looked at everyone else outside who were just as confused as he was. After a few moments, Urahara came back outside, "I need you to sign these! Make them out to Urahara Kisuke!" He said, holding up a collection of books and a pen.

Naruto grinned at him and started signing, "Sweet, a fan. I don't get to talk to many of them seeing as how my actual physical identity is a really well kept secret. Here you go, 'Stay cool Kisuke. Uzumaki Naruto, dattebayo.'"

"Books?" Jinta asked, "What kind of books does a stupid looking guy like that write?"

Urahara looked at Jinta and opened his mouth before realizing that Yoruichi and more importantly Ururu were still standing right there, "I'll tell you when you're older and can properly enjoy. Just know that this is a great, great man that deserves your respect and the respect of every red-blooded man alive."

"Aww." Naruto replied bashfully as he finished signing, "I'm not that great, I'm just carrying on a legacy."

Urahara hugged his collection tight to his body like a child before Tessai appeared and stashed the books for him so that no one could take them and peruse through them. Coughing in his hand to bring the atmosphere back to normal, "Now what can I do for you today in my humble establishment Uzumaki-san?"

"I asked him to come here Kisuke." Yoruichi said, "He's the one that I want to bring."

"Are you sure?" Urahara said, looking at Naruto appraisingly, "He's just a kid. No older than Ichigo."

Yoruichi smirked, "Naruto if you would please start generating some of your yin chakra for the sake of the conversation."

"How much?" Naruto asked, "I kind of don't want to bring any Hollows down, or is that how this works?"

"The amount that you used to keep pace with me should be more than enough to get the point across. The atmosphere was so full of Ichigo's own Reiryoku Kisuke probably couldn't get a good read on yours back when you fought that Menos. If he had he wouldn't be asking this question." Yoruichi replied smugly, as if keeping a secret that no one else around was privy to.

Naruto shrugged, "You're the boss-, err cat- err… Whatever." He said before beginning to focus. The eyes of Jinta and Ururu immediately widened once they felt the power exuding from Naruto, "Sorry if it takes a while to get it all going! I'm used to channeling all of my chakra. Splitting it is something I'm not really used to yet so bear with me if you don't mind, I know this isn't much, but I'll get the rest going!"

'He doesn't think this is much?' Urahara wondered as he held his fan in front of his face, 'If that's the case then he should have as much in his system as Ichigo does in theory… and he seems to be able to control it unlike him.' "That's all I need to see." Urahara replied, stopping Naruto from generating any more.

Naruto stopped and looked at Urahara, "But that wasn't nearly what I was using when me and Yoruichi started going faster. I can still do more."

Urahara smirked and waved his fan, "Yes, but I think that's all my helpers can take at the moment." He said, pointing at a panting Jinta and a shell-shocked Ururu, "You kind of caught them off-guard on that one."

"Sorry kids." Naruto apologized to the children, "I didn't mean to surprise you like that. I'm just used to using a lot of power to do… well anything. It's kind of hard for me to gauge what's a little and a lot to others, or hold back in fighting, or anything really."

Urahara turned to Yoruichi, "Okay he's in! You can take your boy toy to the Soul Society when I send Ichigo!"

"Wait, wait, wait, hold on a second!" Naruto cut in, "I don't know what's going on, but what about the Ichigo guy, and what the hell is a Soul Society?"

XxX

(One Very Long Explanation Later)

Naruto sat inside of Urahara's shop around a table with the others. After giving him the crash course of things he needed to know about spirits they caught him up on what was currently going on, "So you're telling me that the Rukia chick is another Shinigami, and she was taken back to the Soul Society to be executed just for giving Ichigo the power to save his family from a Hollow in her stead. In addition to that you're going to have the boy-wonder himself lead a team that he doesn't even know about yet to go and get her back."

"Pretty much." Urahara replied as Ururu walked in and set down tea for everyone, "So are you in or what?"

Naruto's eye twitched, "You want me to go to the place where dead souls go, fight not just one, not just two, not even a baker's dozen, but an entire army's worth of Shini-fucking-gami, an idea that I'm _still_ just getting used to mind you, with a bunch of baby-faced brats, most of which haven't the faintest idea of what it really means to be in a fight for their lives?"

"Yes." Urahara and Yoruichi replied in unison.

Naruto let out a deep breath to calm himself and lifted one hand, "This is another one of those choices that isn't really a choice is it? On one hand if I go, chances are that I will be killed, and then killed again in a horrible and brutal fashion because they are not going to just leave my soul to roam up there after killing me only once. I will be on edge for however long we're there and I will probably die trying to get everyone out in one piece once everything goes to hell because I have a hero's complex that I have cultivated over a countless number of years of good deeds."

He then lifted the other one and began counter-balancing them, "On the other hand, If I don't go then they most certainly _will_ die since none of them have the faintest idea of how to infiltrate a home of the blind and deaf let alone a military stronghold, I will feel guilty for the entire month because of the story you told me about the Rukia girl and will feel even guiltier that I let those poor kids die, and I will miss out on my chance to be one of the few living humans to have actually seen death itself firsthand and come back to gloat about the tale."

"And?" Urahara and Yoruichi asked excitedly.

Naruto looked at both of his hands and clinched one tightly, "You ask as if I really had a choice. I'm in… and I hate you both for this. You both owe me money, I'm a shinobi, not a charity case."

Yoruichi blinked, "You said you go around helping those that need it."

Naruto scoffed, "I do, but some things I can't do for free, I need to eat too. All of this awesome doesn't run off of kudos and thank yous." Yoruichi hopped into his lap, getting Naruto to pet her, "But I'm still not ready. What am I going to do?"

"Well you have ten days until I open the gate for Ichigo to leave." Urahara stated helpfully, "He has to get prepared to go himself. You can do the same."

Naruto grumbled, "I need to get battle experience against a Shinigami to whip my ass back into shape and so that I know what to expect. You won't let me fight Ichigo, I'm sure of that-."

"-Because you would tear him apart like a jackal on raw meat as he is now!" Urahara said brightly, Yoruichi nodding her agreement.

"Exactly." Naruto said, "No offense but his moves are sluggish and he telegraphs his strikes with that sword. But I could always keep sparring with Yoruichi I guess."

"Sorry Naruto, no can do." She said, hopping out of his lap, leaving him in shock, "You're already ready as far as I saw and if what you told me is true, and I have some others to get ready. The kids that will be assisting Ichigo need guidance to learn to use their powers."

"So what the hell am I going to do?" Naruto cried indignantly, "Fight with oxygen for a week and a half?"

Urahara grinned at Naruto in a manner that didn't bode well for him, "If you're that desperate for a training partner I have an idea for you. All it requires out of you is an open mind and unbreakable balls of steel. Yoruichi seems to have high belief in you so why not?"

Naruto blinked at him before responding, "Those two things have categorized my entire life from day one… What do you want me to do?"

Urahara started writing something down, "Nothing much, just go here and say this. Everything else will take care of itself."

Naruto looked at what Urahara wrote down and grumbled, "I sure am being sent on a lot of errands aren't I? Are you sure this is going to help me? It seems like a waste of time."

"You won't be disappointed." Urahara replied, grinning behind his fan.

"Are you trying to kill my charge Kisuke?" Yoruichi asked, glaring at him somewhat.

Urahara feigned hurt and turned away so no one could see his grinning expression properly, "Why Yoruichi I'm appaled! I would never do such a thing to any ally of yours. Naruto-san here is a friend and I am a great fan of his. Everything I am doing is beneficial." He mumbled the next part, "To multiple parties." He felt a certain presence make its way nearby, "Oh, Naruto could you hide for a moment? Someone important is here."

"I'll just leave. I want to see what this place you're making me go to is all about and there's no time like the present." Naruto replied, "Catch you guys in ten days I guess." He said before disappearing in a swirl of leaves.

Jinta palmed his face, "Stupid idiot… now I'll have to sweep that up!"

Yoruichi looked at the trail Naruto left, "I think I should leave as well. I have the others to prepare as well." She said before hopping out of the open window, "Talk to you soon Kisuke."

Urahara stood up and went to the front door before opening it, "Welcome, how are your wounds?" He asked.

Ichigo stood in front of Urahara and opened his shirt to reveal a series of faint scars, "Recovered."

"That's good." The bucket-hat wearing man said earnestly, "Well shall we begin?"

XxX

Naruto stood out in front of a secluded warehouse, frowning as he didn't see, hear, or sense anything at all, 'This is a total red herring. What am I doing here?' Pulling the card that Urahara had written his directions out on and what he was to say once he arrived, "My name is Uzumaki Naruto and I've come to kick some Shinigami-reject ass! Please line up single file and I promise it will be quick and exact!" He looked at what he had just read strangely, "What is this an offer or a challenge?"

"What did you just say you dead son of a bitch?" An angry voice roared before the door to the facility opened, revealing a short girl with blonde hair in stubby pigtails. She had on a red jogging suit and flip-flops. She had a pronounced fang sticking from the right side of her mouth as she glared at Naruto hatefully, "Who are you and what made you want to come and commit suicide like this?"

"Oi! Look at this shit!" It was too much for Naruto to take, beginning to break down in laughter, "Did I just call out a pygmy for a fight or something? Is Urahara high? Why the hell did he send me here? What does he think I'm going to get out of this?"

The door opened further to reveal a rather lively assortment of people. All giving Naruto a wary, rather hostile glance. His apprehension at the people staring him down got a smirk out of the first girl that had answered the girl.

Naruto looked down at what Urahara had written down once more and saw the words 'good luck, stay alive' and a chibi drawing of Urahara grinning with a fan written down when he heard the sound of steel sliding. He lowered the note and saw that they all had their swords drawn at him. Naruto began to sweat bullets and read the last thing that Urahara told him to say on the note, "Um… I don't know what this means exactly, but no masks please."

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**Okay, I wrote the mass bulk of this chapter while I was in class so you know where my priorities are. You could say that, or you could say that I'm the god of mutiltasking. Take it however you choose to. However in my defense I will say that the class is a history class… and everything I ever needed to know about any kind of history ever I took to learning on my own when I was ten years old so I'm really only taking the class for the easy credits. I **_**know**_** everything already.**

**A lot of people are worried that I'll be not updating other stories as much. Not really. When I update something I have to fight to not update the same thing immediately after I post a new chapter. I kept making new stories because if I didn't I would update one single story every single day like I did early on with my first story and it would get over-exposed too quickly, jading people to it. I want my updates to feel somewhat special for those that enjoy my work. Hence, I know what I'm doing. Don't worry about it. I love doing this and I won't stop anytime soon.**

**I will be working on this for at least one more chapter before focusing back on my other stuff because I want this to have a decent base like everything new that I start before I throw it into my usual rotation.**

**Anyway, enough about me, let's talk about me. Review if you dare, Kenchi out.**


	3. Da Soul Touchas'

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. I do however own a bottle of bleach, so technically I own (B)leach. Fuck you world, I own bleach! Who's laughing now?

…Not me, because all of my clothes are white. Take this as a lesson. With great power comes great responsibility.

**Chapter 3: Da Soul Touchas'**

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As his senses fully came back to him, a beaten and tattered Naruto lay down on the ground inside of a sizeable training area set to look like a mountainous wasteland. His clothes were blood-soaked and cut to near rags and he was taking deep breaths. His eyes were swollen, but those along with his other numerous wounds were rapidly healing, something that his tormentors took advantage of regularly. Thirty minutes to an hour of letting his carcass sit in the sun depending on how beaten up he was, then they pick him back up and kick his ass again.

It was good at first. Fantastic fighting, especially the girl he called out at the start, yeah they kicked each other's asses all over the place. It was good times. He fought her tooth and nail for a few hours and then she switched out with one of the others, he liked her in particular though, she fought him for every step, even slapped the shit out of him with a sandal a few times. It was cool with him, he had nothing but energy to burn and these guys were incredibly strong. Whenever one didn't feel like fighting they would switch out and he would keep fighting, getting a taste of new combat styles, and these guys had it all over the board on that front, no two fought alike. It was great! Bar none it was the best training he had gotten in his entire life.

But eventually everything wears down. And fighting them each back to back, him against a fresh one every time, were not a very good set of odds for him. However they would not stop, and he wasn't about to be a punk and call time-out. No single person outlasted him, not even an entire group of 8 people during one stretch. He would outlast and deal with at least two before having to take a rest. So he kept fighting, taking the short one to ten minute reprieves in between battles as precious lifeblood that kept him going.

That was three days ago.

He still had seven left.

And they were all fresh from repeated rest… and there was the big guy with the pink hair, green suit, mustache, and gentle demeanor there to heal them right up even when he actually _did_ kick their asses too bad for simple rest and time to solve. No one was doing that shit for him, he was relying on good old me, myself, and I.

A tall muscular man with silver hair, a purple tank-top, green cargo pants, black combat boots, and orange fingerless gloves looked down on Naruto poking his body with his foot, "You still alive down there Uzumaki?"

Naruto groaned and glared as best he could at the man, enhanced by the Rinnegan, "I swear to Kami and the original Rikudou Sennin himself… I swear on my name as Uzumaki Naruto… I swear on my damned uber-sexy whisker-marks… I am going to kick all of your asses so hard your backsides will have permanent ball-court grip." He sat up painfully and slowly stood to his feet before swishing his mouth around and spitting out a mouthful of blood, "You've had your time. Tag out already… I want someone else to kick my ass." He lifted his finger to point out his target.

His finger drifted over to where the others were sitting and stopped on one of them, "You-." He pointed at a woman with green short hair who wore a white bodysuit and orange gloves, orange boots, and an orange scarf to go with the goggles atop her head. She perked up brightly when she noticed he was talking to her, "- Cutie. You look way too bored over there and that's a crime. Get in here."

She smiled brightly and jumped up from where she was sitting. The silver-haired man walked over to the resting area rubbing his neck as he held out his hand, "Looks like it's your turn Mashiro. I swear… this guy's made of the toughest stuff in the world."

The girl happily extended her own arm and slapped palms with the man, physically 'tagging him out' so to speak, "Finally Kensei! I've been waiting forever to fight Fishcake again."

"Goddamn it that joke is thousands of years old! It means maelstrom damn it!" Naruto roared in a tantrum from where he was waiting to fight, "Now get your ass over here and fight me before I puke again from overexertion! I haven't eaten in three and a half fucking days and if I stop my stomach will notice!"

"Coming!" Mashiro replied cheerfully as she made her way over to Naruto, "Zanpaktou or no zanpaktou?"

"You haven't used it yet, why mess with a good thing?" He yelled, gesturing for her to come on, "Now bring it! Let's see if any of you can break the time record of putting me down this time. I haven't been beaten faster than four hours total yet for all of you combined!"

"I'll put you down in twenty minutes!" She yelled back before disappearing in a burst of speed.

"I'm still using Swift Release and you ain't as fast as Yoruichi!" He said before doing the same thing himself. Naruto met her in a clash in the middle of the field, his fist colliding with the flat of her foot. The force of both attacks pushing each other away, "You do have one hell of a kick on you though, but I'm glad to say that for the most part, my Ninjutsu still works on you guys! Shinigami beware my murder-face!" Naruto shouted as he made hand-seals, "Doton: Kusari no Yobi (Earth Release: Call of Chains)!"

Naruto slammed his hands into the ground, forcing nine thick chains to emerge and shoot out of the ground at Mashiro in an attempt to capture and bind her for Naruto's benefit. Mashiro however, while not as fast as Yoruichi was to her credit still far and beyond fast enough to keep away from Naruto's chains, dodging them completely and coming at Naruto head-on while he was focused on keeping them active. The girl was petite and very unassuming at a first glance but so far she had been keeping pace with Naruto and even outclassing him at times using pure hand-to-hand skill and her speed… not to mention the times when she kicked him felt like he was a baseball that had been drilled for a liner.

"Shit…" Naruto muttered, dropping the chains and making more hand-seals in a blur of fingers and smashing his hands into the ground, "Doton: Doryuu Taiga (Earth Release: Mud Flow River)!"

Because she had been making a beeline right for Naruto the entire time as he hadn't moved and she was so much faster than his jutsu, Mashiro was literally caught slipping when she slipped on the ground underneath her which had turned into a stream of mud that was rapidly moving towards Naruto, "This is gross Fishcake!" She said as she found herself almost right on Naruto who had his fist cocked back to strike the helpless girl. Well, he thought she was helpless. She never got that memo.

"Ahh! Damn it I can't see!" Naruto shouted as a large glob of mud hit him in the eyes. He jumped away to clear his eyes and upon doing so saw Mashiro right in front of him.

"Mashiro Drop Kick!" She shouted before driving her feet right into Naruto's body, sending him flying through the air. He didn't know how high the ceiling was and he didn't want to, thus he stopped himself in mid-air and simply hung there, "Hey! That's right, I forgot you can do that too! That's good!" She yelled to him before taking off after him in the air to continue combat.

He had learned a very important lesson here in this grueling little torture session that he was going to use for sure once he found Urahara for revenge. His ninjutsu still worked on Shinigami. At first he didn't know what the deal was with those Hollows he fought, but against a Shinigami if he could see them and he was aware of them spiritually he could hit them with an attack, just as clear as if he were punching them. Good to know. It made the getting kicked around thing far more tolerable, and the look on their faces when he started throwing his Ninjutsu around…

Priceless.

They called it Kidou, especially with the incantation, but he was quick to correct them that the two were similar, but not the same, nor did he need to call out the name of the attacks that he knew better than others. From that point forward all bets had been off, and any inkling any of them had on holding back died right there as they went hit for hit. Kidou vs. Ninjutsu.

He had bitched about his jutsu not really having effect on a Hollow he had tried to electrocute when he first arrived in town and they said they had no clue as to why it didn't work, because it sure hurt them badly enough. After the third time of getting his bell rung by Kensei the realization hit him; elemental advantages still exist, just in a more magnified manner _because_ all Hollows are were spirits. He had simply gotten bad luck on both sides of the draw so to speak against the first one he tried a Ninjutsu on.

They were comprised of Reishi (Spirit Particles) in its rawest most unrefined form that could still take corporeal shape, like a biju but not nearly as strong or able to interact with the environment at large, not made of the earthly things that people and other things were made of that had to share the same genetic makeup. Hollows didn't have that rule to follow, so Hollows and their elemental affinities were more in-tuned than an untrained human's would be naturally, hence why some could fly faster than others (wind), why some were tougher than others (earth), why some had violently effective natural defenses or could pierce through almost anything (lightning), why some were extremely elusive and hard to get a hold of (water), and why some had body types that corresponded for attacks of incredible power no matter how weak or unspectacular the Hollow itself really was (fire).

It wasn't the fact that part of chakra was physical that was the problem. The problem was that if the attack he used was the Hollow's element the physical portion would be canceled out entirely, leaving him with a jutsu that only had half of a kick to it, not enough to do damage to a Hollow that shared the element.

How did he think of all of this? Which of his new acquaintances helped him? None of them, unless you counted the dogged fighting that got the blood pumping in his brain to allow him to think as help. However, time between fights added up, especially when you found yourself unable to move, so in their own rather sadistic way they did help.

"I'm going to knock you out Fishcake!" Mashiro said happily as she blocked one of Naruto's kicks with her own.

"You all say that." Naruto said with a roll of the eyes.

The two continued clashing all over the field hand-to-hand as the others sat on the side and watched.

"Man…" A tall man with a weird star-shaped afro, a green jogging suit, and sunglasses said as he alternated between reading a manga and watching Naruto fight Mashiro, "Other than blacking out every few hours he's been going nonstop. You've got to admit it's pretty impressive. And he took the whole revelation of a Visored thing pretty well too."

A blonde man with a seeming permanent grin on his face and a newsboy cap smirked as he watched the fight going on, "I think part of that had to do with Hiyori's foot being stuck in his windpipe during the explanation process, but I get your point Love. *sigh* I'm kind of sick of fighting him though. He's like a nuclear generator, he never fucking runs out of energy. Give him a little downtime and he's right back up in your face. That's dangerous."

"Shut up Shinji, I'm not through fighting him!" The blonde girl Naruto had originally picked with on his arrival said, chomping at the bit to get back in there, "I haven't extracted my pound of flesh from his dumbass yet!"

"Mashiro Kick!"

The sound of a solid blow rang out prompting everyone to look up, "Heads up!" Shinji yelled grabbing Hiyori and holding her out in front of himself like a human shield as Naruto hurtled through the air at him, "Incoming! Hachi, barrier now!" A quick barrier flew up around them as Naruto's body smacked off the side of it and stuck to it back-first like a bug on glass, "That was close…" He commented before getting decked in the face by an angry blonde girl that proceeded to stomp on his face repeatedly.

"Oww…" Naruto said to himself before he shook off the cobwebs and glared back out at Mashiro, "For the last time, that's not an actual attack! You just shouted your own name and kicked the shit out of me! It actually has to do something special to count!"

"It hit you didn't it Swirly-Eyes? That should be special enough!" She yelled back.

Naruto mumbled out a reply about how he wasn't even using Rinnegan this time under his breath and looked back at the other Visoreds, "And you guys are lazy! You made Hachi throw up that barrier just because you didn't want to move your asses! Gah, I'm so pissed I'm going to-!" He was cut off from his rant by blood jutting from his nose and his body falling off of the barrier to the ground.

"Yes! I'm the one that finished you this time Fishcake!" Mashiro shouted proudly as she made her way back over to the others and Naruto.

"Didn't count…" Naruto said weakly, "…I just… ran out of chakra. Just give me a few-…" He shut his eyes and blacked out.

A long haired blonde man in a black suit and a frilled white shirt looked Naruto over, "I don't think he's getting up this time." He whistled lowly, "What a marathon though."

A woman in red glasses, a ponytail and a school uniform nodded, "I'll say Love. Three days with no real breaks in between… you've got to love that stamina." She stood up, "Okay, Hachi can heal him and we can let him rest up. I'll check the bag he brought and see if he brought any clothes."

Shinji smirked, "You just want to use that as an excuse to go through his stuff and potentially see the guy naked when you change him don't you Lisa?"

Lisa didn't reply as she went off to grab Naruto's stuff. Meanwhile the large man Hachi moved over Naruto and erected a barrier around him, "I'm terribly sorry about that. The others haven't had any sort of activity like this in a long time and you were a good target to vent some longstanding aggression."

"Stop apologizing Hachi!" Hiyori said as she marched over to Naruto who was beginning to gain consciousness, "This dumbass came and called us out. He's just lucky he told us no mask beforehand and asked nicely."

Love looked at Naruto and then to everyone else, "How did he even know about that?"

Hachi deactivated the barrier when Naruto stuck up his arm holding a piece of paper shakily Hachi took it and read it before handing it to Shinji who quickly understood. "Oh, Urahara. Well that explains it." He walked over to Naruto and kneeled down over the barrier that Hachi had made to heal his wounds, "Okay we told you that we're Visoreds but do you know what that actually is?" Naruto shook his head no, "Are you from the Gotei 13?"

Naruto shook his head weakly, "I barely know what that is. What's a Visored?"

Shinji gave Naruto a serious look, "A Visored is a Shinigami that has developed Hollow powers." A pharaoh-looking mask formed over his face that increased the pressure of the room to Naruto, **"Like this, see?"**

Naruto's eyes widened as his body began to feel the effects of Hachi's healing, "Whoa. How do you get powers like that?"

Shinji laughed humorlessly, **"Not by choice I should say. I'm going to skip the boring part since I don't really trust you, but long story short we were forcefully given these powers. We never asked for them."**

Naruto shut his eyes and nodded thoughtfully, "I can understand that. What you're talking about isn't that much different from me honestly."

Hiyori placed her foot on Hachi's barrier and sneered down at Naruto, "And what exactly would some dopey looking guy like you know about something like this?"

"Can you let the barrier go now?" Naruto asked Hachi politely, "Thanks a lot, your healing barrier worked really fast. You're good."

Hachi complied and bowed to Naruto, 'My time-space regression doesn't work that fast. What amazing healing capabilities.'

Hiyori growled at Naruto, "Hey I was talking to you! Don't ignore me damn it!"

Naruto turned towards her, "Well now that I know what the masks are, shall we continue. Just you and me…" He then smirked, "And you can use the mask."

Hiyori looked at him in surprise, as did everyone else. She finally grinned at him evilly, "You know you just signed your own death warrant, right? Hachi, put up a barrier so that no one feels this."

"Yeah, yeah." Naruto said jumping back towards his feet. He used Shunshin to re-appear in middle of the battlefield, "Just get back out here so we can do this. This is what you wanted the entire time right?"

Hiyori quickly did as asked and made her way to directly in front of Naruto, drawing her Zanpaktou and pointing at him, "Is this what you really want? You're going to be sorry."

"Just do it and let me be the judge of that." Naruto said before feeling a rather oppressive aura set over the area, "Man that has some kick to it…" He remarked as a skeletal mask with diamond markings across the brow and a horn on the forehead formed over Hiyori's face.

She pulled the mask up to smirk at him, **"So how do you like this?"**

Naruto chuckled nervously, "That's really strong… This is great…" He said before he began laughing slowly. As time carried on his laughter increased more and more, confusing everyone in the room "This is absolutely great! I don't think I'm going to stomp a mudhole in Urahara anymore when I see him again! He introduced me to you guys! I think we're going to get along just fine."

Hiyori looked at him with her black sclera and brown iris eyes in confusion, **"Why would you thank him? I'm about to kick your ass."**

"I want to thank him because he introduced me to all of you. A bunch of people…" Naruto's eyes turned orange in color as a series of strange markings formed and expanded from his stomach across his torso starting at a spiral on his navel. A yellow shroud completely engulfed Naruto's body, releasing energy in flickers of flame, **"…Who are just like me!"**

Hiyori looked at him in pure shock. The power flowing off of him was just as strong as their own. It felt almost the same except for a little something else that she couldn't place her finger on, **"Are you a Visored too? You said you weren't a Shinigami!"**

"**I never lied to you. This thing inside of me isn't a Hollow. It's not just spiritual, it's also something physical. Everyone can see and sense this, not just those that are spiritually aware, everyone. I'm not a Shinigami."** Naruto answered honestly with a serene smile on his face that still confused everyone, **"I hold something inside of me known as a biju; a living corporeal mass of chakra which is the combination of spiritual and physical energy. I haven't had to do this in a very long time. I didn't think I would ever find anyone else like me ever again."**

Hiyori let her mask fade. She no longer desired a fight with Naruto, instead having too many questions to warrant a battle right now, "What do you mean 'like you'? How are any of us like you?"

Naruto let his own enhanced power fade, "Because I didn't ask for this power to be put into me either, but I fought for control of it just like you all had to for the sake of myself and the people around me, because I know a Hollow would never just freely give you control and cooperate peacefully, same with me and mine."

"What are you?" Shinji asked from the sidelines.

Naruto looked over at the other Visoreds and grinned at them, "I'm just your average everyday immortal/jinchuuriki/sage/shinobi. Nothing too out of the ordinary. I travel around, doing this and that here and there, and I-."

"Uzumaki-sama!" Lisa came from out of nowhere and grabbed a hold of Naruto in a tight hug, catching him off-guard and surprising the hell out of the others who had never seen her act this way, "I'm your biggest fan! I've read every story you've ever written! All 45 volumes of the Icha-Icha series!"

Naruto grinned as he felt Lisa press his face into her bosom, "-I write books, dattebayo." He tried looking up at Lisa but found it rather hard to do as she was smothering him, "Well this is a refreshing change of pace. I mean before this you were trying to kill me with your sword, now you're trying to kill me in a far more pleasant way."

Lisa let go of him, "I just saw your manuscript for the next series, but I couldn't read it! It's in some language I can't understand!"

Naruto chuckled, "I do that because it's the language I used as a child. It kind of fell out of practice as the years wore on so no one is around that can really translate it." He actually started paying attention and saw that Love, Shinji, and Rose had surrounded him with star-struck looks on their faces, "Yes?"

Shinji pointed at him, "You're Uzumaki Naruto? _The_ Uzumaki Naruto? Your books never had your picture! No one did!"

Naruto looked at Shinji proudly, "I published the books myself! My sensei wrote the first volume that had the first three books… I just kept re-releasing them over and over again throughout history before I started writing my own follow up volumes like 150 years ago. People kept on thinking that it was just a passed down pen name for anonymity but no, I'm immortal!" He laughed maniacally before calming himself.

"Can we have your autograph!" Love and Rose yelled at him, brandishing books for him to sign.

Naruto nodded and immediately made a Kage Bunshin that signed in his place. Lisa sidled up to his side, looking away from him in an indifferent manner that was spoiled by the blush on her cheeks, "So how exactly do you get the inspiration for these books."

Naruto rubbed the back of his head, "Because I've been alive for a long, long time. And in that long, long time I have seen and done many, many things… things that I have chronicled in some way in book form. All of the stuff that happens in those books is stuff that is loosely based on things that I've done. Every separate volume of adventure arcs is a separate adventure of mine."

Shinji got in his face excitedly, "So the stories about the wandering warrior traversing the desert kingdoms?"

Naruto nodded, "Yep, me."

Love did the same, "And the ones about the man travelling the American plains in the expansion era, mingling with pioneer and Indian alike?"

"Good times…" Naruto admitted, "Except the pioneer men were really kind of assholes… but Indians are totally cool."

Rose rounded them out with his own question, "What about the series in Renaissance Italy and Germany?"

Naruto pointed a thumb at himself, "Yo." He then shivered slightly, "Bubonic plague was gross… good thing I'm so healthy and clean."

"And…" Lisa added questioningly, "You did _everything_ in those books?"

Naruto looked at her and gave her entire figure a once over, "Would you like to find out? It has been a long time, but there are some things you never forget how to do." Instead of an answer he took a shot to the face from a sandal that sent him flying . Getting up to his feet angrily he glared at Hiyori, "Stop hitting me with that damn thing!"

"Stop being a pervert!" Hiyori yelled back, brandishing the offending footwear threateningly in his direction.

Naruto shook his fist at her, "Not being a pervert is boring! Maybe you should try it, you might not be so high-strung if you actually got some every now and then!" A sandal flew across the area and struck him in the face, sliding off and leaving footprints, "How does that keep hitting me? It's not even moving that fast!"

XxX

Now that everything had calmed down and all of the Visored had gotten their arbitrary aggression out of their systems it was question time. They all made their way back to the warehouse area of the hideout and sat around. Naruto was finally able to change his clothes which were next to destroyed, and get some food of the ramen variety in him when Shinji started with the questions, "So why did Urahara send you here to get your ass kicked?"

Naruto stopped eating and lightly glared at him, "I didn't get my ass kicked. I think I did awesome considering you all came at me back to back one after the other. But Urahara sent me here so that I could learn how to fight a Shinigami."

"Why would you want to go do something like that?" The easy-going blonde man asked his spiky-haired new acquaintance, "You're not even a spirit, you're a human. A strong human, but still a human. Why would you go to the Sereitei for anything?"

Naruto sighed, "A friend wants me to. And if I don't go then who knows what will happen? Some other kids that have never dealt with anything like this before are going to rescue a friend that's going to be executed for no good reason."

Lisa spoke up, poking her head out of one of her novels to interject, "Been there, done that."

"Anyway." Naruto continued, "I'm also really curious. I mean it's gotten to the point that nothing on Earth can put me down anymore, so Kami, in his or her infinite wisdom and desire to see me struggle has decided to introduce me to the spiritual side. I don't know what to think yet. This entire situation is less than a week old for me."

"You scared?" Shinji asked him, grinning teasingly.

Naruto frowned, "Nope. It's just progression at this point. What more is there for me to experience in life at this point? I'll tell you; death. You can't run away from it no matter how much bonus time you're given. Apparently this is my time for a little run-in with it."

Mashiro sat between the two at the table between them looking between them as they spoke, "Wow, you're a cool guy Fishcake. I like you!"

Shinji sighed, "You like him because he's the first new person we've met in around 100 years, he let us kick his ass, he doesn't care that we have Hollow sides, and he doesn't think you're annoying." He let a grin find its way back onto his face, "I think I like him too."

"Me too!" Love, Rose, and Lisa all chimed in, holding up autographed copies of Naruto's books.

Kensei growled at the rest of them, "How can you just accept the guy like that. He may have that strange power inside of him, but it doesn't feel anything like ours. It feels like our opposite, full of life."

Naruto looked over at Kensei and stopped chewing his food, "Well that's because I used the yang cloak of my jinchuurki form when I used it. It's easier to make the yang cloak than the other one that I have, and when I make the yin cloak, the cloak made out of Reiryoku, it burns through my chakra faster than the other that's more akin to pure Ki, which is yang chakra. I find more of a use with the yang than the yin too."

"You can't hold your form forever either?" Kensei said, more to himself than to Naruto, "Just like us… Are you sure you're not really our predecessor or something? Because the things that you're saying about this power in you seem more and more familiar." He shook his head when he saw Naruto staring at him blankly with noodles hanging from his mouth, "Ugh, nevermind."

Naruto shrugged and finished off his noodles before beginning to slurp down the broth, while Hiyori kept pacing around the warehouse muttering, "Well I still don't like him! I don't trust him! What if he's been sent here to destroy us off of orders? He could just be trying to befriend us to learn about us before he takes us out."

Naruto finished his food with a small burp and looked at Hiyori, "No one gives me any kind of orders, I do what I want. I wouldn't do it anyway. I would rather fail my mission and deal with the consequences than kill you, even if it was a mission. It's not, I just came here because of someone else and I'm not disappointed." He grinned at Hiyori mischievously, "I told you already; I like you guys."

Hiyori looked at him in shock before turning away muttering something about blonde dumbasses. Naruto could have used that to pick on her, but decided to let it slide for now. Shinji crossed his legs as he sat in his chair, "So you seem plenty good enough in a fight to all of us. What are you going to do for seven more days?"

"I don't know." Naruto admitted, scratching his head, "Urahara never said whether or not I could show up early, so I guess I'll stick around here if you'd let me." He looked around at all of the Visoreds and placed his hands together in a pleading fashion, "Please? I promise that you won't even notice I'm here! I won't take up much space at all, I'm super-clean, and I'll be your best friend!"

"Why would you want to stay here?" Rose asked him, utterly surprised by someone that was more or less normal for a lack of a better term and should have had a normal life.

Naruto's answer was plain and simple, "Because you guys are awesome! I really don't want to have to find another hotel to stay at, I'd actually like to hang out for a while. I'm sick of being lonely, you know?" He suspected that they did indeed know. Just because they seemed to rather keep to themselves more often than not didn't mean that they didn't feel the same way, "I can pay you guys, I'm rich after all, and I can hang out with each and every one of you-." Naruto formed seven Kage Bunshin, "-At the same time."

The Visoreds all looked at him appraisingly as if trying to gauge his sincerity, but couldn't see any deceit behind the big goofy grin he was giving them. After a while of them staring at him his grin dropped and he dispelled his clones, "Fine you cheap bastards, I'll buy all of the food and goodies that everyone wants for the entire stay."

Shinji appeared behind Naruto and patted him on his shoulder good-naturedly, "Welcome to the family Naruto!"

"Yeah whatever…" Naruto grumbled, but with no anger in his voice as he still had a smile on his face, "So what do you guys do for fun around here?"

"Read." Lisa said, backed up by Love and Rose who were holding up issues of manga magazines and books.

"Train." Kensei said firmly, crossing his arms as if to dare Naruto to say something negative.

"Oh, I don't know." Hachi said somewhat sheepishly.

"Mess with Kensei!" Mashiro said loudly, getting a growl of annoyance from the man in question."

"Pick on Snaggletooth/Dumbass." Both Shinji and Hiyori said respectively before Hiyori realized what he called her and jumped at him, leading to another fight between them.

Naruto let out a sweatdrop as he watched the others go about their usual business, which to him looked like a whole lot of nothing, "Okay this is pretty bad… I'm going to find all of you something useful to do with your time as far as hobbies go. Is all that you guys do train and… well, this?"

"Yes."

Upon hearing the unanimous response his sweatdrop grew more pronounced, "Come on… I've been alive for thousands of years and I came up with tons of stuff to occupy my time besides that. Pranking world leaders and monarchs, making fortunes and blowing them on useless stuff… you guys have got to have something."

Mashiro raised her hand as if she were in class, "Does getting drunk count?"

Naruto let out a sigh and ran his palm down his face before giving off a defeated look, "Yes. Getting drunk counts. Let's get drunk. Let's get drunk and we can talk about all of the awesome things we've done, then we can go back into the training room and fight some more. That should kill some time." A unanimous chant of agreement soon followed.

XxX

(Urahara Shop – Day of Departure)

Inside of Urahara's shop sat a training facility much like the one that the Visoreds possessed in their own warehouse. In addition to Uryuu and Ichigo, the others down there happened to be a rather silent, large, dark skinned teen with curly brown hair covering one eye, a sleeveless grey shirt with a red stripe, and olive pants. There was also a rather bright teen girl with orange hair, bangs tucked back with a pair of hair-pins. She also wore a pink short-sleeved shirt and grey pants.

Getting everyone's attention, Urahara pointed over to himself, "Okay, everyone pay attention please! It's about time to go!" A series of stones formed behind him into a square door, "This is the gate to the Soul Society. Now please listen up, I will now teach you the way to go through this door without dying. But first-." He slammed the bottom of his cane into Ichigo's body, separating his soul from his body, "That's better."

The others were all picking with his body, marveling at how he was separated, "Why are you guys messing with my body? Focus!" He yelled in annoyance. Who said they could just poke at him freely like that?

Kon appeared in teddy-bear/lion form over Ichigo's shoulder, "Right! Because that body is going to be mine for the time being! You guys shouldn't touch it… everyone except Orihime-san… She can touch it." He said, pointing at the girl

"Kon why are you here?" Ichigo asked the plush toy as the others started to freak out at the sight of a talking toy.

"Why?" Kon said indignantly, "I'm going with you of course! Do you really think you're leaving me behind? I will brave the difficulties of the Soul Society and-." He was cut off by Chad, the large one, grabbing him and looking at him intently, forcing him to scream out in fear.

"Hey!" Urahara shouted and waved, trying to get everyone's attention, "You can look back over here now! I'm trying to explain how the door works here!" He settled down and got back into explanation mode, "As you know, the Soul Society is the world of the souls so in order to be there you actually have to be a soul. However the only one that really has the freedom to move around is Ichigo due to him being a Shinigami. Even if the rest of you have your souls separated from your bodies you would still be bound by your Chain of Fate. That is why a Reishihenkanki (Spirit Exchanger) that will change the make-up of physical things in the living world into Reishi, the main component of souls."

Uryuu understood what was being said, "So all we have to do is go through this door and everything on that front will handle itself."

"Correct." Urahara replied, "You can all go to the Soul Society as you currently are."

Ichigo started marching towards the door, "Right then, let's go!"

Urahara cut him off by slamming his cane into the his side, "Not done yet!" He chirped cheerfully as Ichigo held his side in pain, "The process won't bring pain and you'll be able to go to the Soul Society, the real problem is time. The amount of time you will all be given to get through to the Soul Society is four minutes. Once time is up the door will close and you guys will forever be locked in the space between the living world and the Soul Society, the Dangai."

He continued, "If you are caught by something called the Kouryuu, even a single foot, the chance of leaving in time becomes impossible."

Orihime looked rather disheartened by the rundown of their odds of even just making it there, "So what should we do?"

"Keep moving forward."

The others looked at Yoruichi entering the room with a serious look… as serious a look as a cat can have, "I thought I told you; your heart and soul are connected. What is important is how your heart thinks. Only those that can do so will be allowed to follow me."

"What are you talking about?" Ichigo said belligerently, "Everyone here today made the decision to go and are determined to go through with it."

"You should know kid…" Yoruichi said off-handedly, "If you lose in there you won't be coming back."

"I guess we won't be losing then." Ichigo replied determinedly.

"Well said." Yoruichi said proudly before a tick mark formed on the head of the cat indicating annoyance, "Sorry I'm late everyone, I had to go retrieve someone who decided to sleep in."

"Sorry I'm late everyone… I woke up with a black cat standing over me and decided that was bad luck so I took a walk around Karakura Town to let my luck settle." A rather haggard sounding voice said as footsteps signified the person descending down to their level, "And don't blame me for that Yoruichi. On the last day we just drank all day long and fought." Ichigo and Uryuu could have sworn that they had heard the voice before.

Yoruichi scoffed and continued to walk over to the others, leading the person to enter the room alone, "So then why did I find you naked this morning?" The others face-faulted at that little kernel of information they didn't need to hear.

Finally making an appearance was Naruto, dressed in a dark green combat vest, a set of rather loose black pants, and a pair of distinct sandals that fit firmly and secured his foot and around his ankle for good support. To top the outfit off he wore an orange bandanna around his neck with the rusted metal leaf insignia sewn into it, and a red overcoat with black flames lining the bottom. Naruto's eyes were rather bloodshot and red, "Why did I find _you_ naked this morning?" He fired back at the cat in a seemingly nonsensical fashion, "I didn't do anything to anyone there last night did I?"

Yoruichi grinned at him, "Trying to repress some shameful memories?"

Naruto waved that sentiment off, "Nope, none whatsoever. I would just like to remember what I did. It might make a cool scene to write about. I'm expecting tons of stuff to write about on this little mission of ours."

Ichigo pointed at Naruto, "You're that Naruto guy we met a while back! What are you doing here?"

"Wasn't he in our class for one day?" Chad remarked as he had been there the day Naruto had been thrown in.

"Don't remind me." Naruto said bitterly, "I'll be damned if I'm ever going back to school. I'm an award-winning author that has sold countless books. Who needs school at that point?"

"Don't change the subject!" Ichigo snapped impatiently, "What are you doing here? Do you even know Rukia or something?"

Naruto shook his head, "Honestly no. And I have no reason to be doing this personally other than the fact that Yoruichi asked me to, and the fact that just because Rukia isn't a part of my plane of existence doesn't mean that I should just let her be killed for such a stupid reason."

Urahara walked over and placed a hand on Naruto's shoulder, "Naruto-san! I hope that your training was to your liking!"

Naruto gave him an evil grin that sent a shiver down his spine, "Yes it was Urahara! I'd be happy to show you just how fruitful it was after I get back! We should sit down and have a little… chat. But it can wait until I get back."

"Ah heh…" Urahara backed away from Naruto and slapped the gate with his fan, "Okay! Let's get going! The moment the gate is open, you guys rush in!" A few taps of his cane and a portal between worlds was opened between the stones comprising the gate. Naruto walked towards it, rolling his shoulders out to loosen up.

"Alright. You both owe me money or something of equal value. Remember that." Naruto said, pointing at Urahara and Yoruichi while stepping up first, "I don't like playing guinea pig, but no guts, no glory. See you guys on the other side!" He said, jumping in abruptly before anyone else.

"Shall we?" Yoruichi asked, getting a nod out of Ichigo and the others before they all jumped through as well.

XxX

(Soul Society – West Rukongai 1st District)

The trip through the tunnel had been extremely dangerous. Almost getting caught by the thing that Urahara warned them about as well as something else known as the cleaner of the tunnel had nearly finished them off before real danger could begin. Were it not for Orihime's timely intervention with her powers they would have been finished.

"Is everyone alright?" Orihime asked brightly as she looked at all of the others laying in a heap.

Uryuu sat up and held his head, "I really didn't think we'd be that pathetic right off the bat. Totally unexpected." He felt the back of his costume, "I didn't think I'd have to use my backup cape so soon." Everyone looked at Uryuu strangely for carrying extra capes specifically for his outfit with him.

"Great!" Orihime said cheerfully, "It looks like no one was hurt!"

"What's so good about that?" Yoruichi yelled as the cat headbutted Orihime in the eye, getting her to start crying, "Were you even listening to me in there? It's a good thing that only the shield was touched by the Koutotsu! If it was the main body of your Shun-Shun Rikka you would have been dead by now!" Yoruichi said, poking her on her hair-pins.

"Why are you so pissed off?" Ichigo said, "We're all okay because of Inoue.

"You don't seem to understand the situation…" Yoruichi said, looking around, "And to top it off we lost Naruto. What on earth happened to him?"

The smoke around them cleared to reveal a rather residential looking place. A town if they were guessing right. Ichigo got a good look at their surroundings and commented on it, "This is the Soul Society?"

"Yes." Yoruichi began explaining for his benefit, "We are currently on the outskirts. The Rukongai (Wandering Soul City), the place where souls live when they first come to Soul Society. It is located around the Seireitei (Court of Pure Souls), which is our intended destination. This is the poorest area of the Soul Society, but also the most free and holds the most souls."

Ichigo looked over where there was a clear discrepancy in how things were set up as far as the lay-out of the area, "Hey that must be the whatchamcallit where all of the Shinigami live, right? I'm going in!" He said as he rushed over by himself.

"No you idiot! You can't go in that way!" Yoruichi shouted, trying to stop him, but it was too late.

Ichigo turned around to look at Yoruichi and was nearly crushed by a massive defensive wall that cut him off from proceeding further, "What the hell?" He said in confusion as he could see no way around whatsoever because of the smoke shrouding his view.

"It's been so long since someone tried going through the western gate without a pass." A booming voice said from in front of Ichigo. The smoke cleared, revealing a man that towered over Ichigo. He wore a small hat on his head, and the left side of his chest was exposed by his uniform, however he had armor on his left shoulder and upper arm, "I finally have something to do!" He picked up a massive ax and slammed it down in front of Ichigo, "Go ahead and attack from any angle you'd like kid."

Uryuu looked at the man in awe, "Who is this guy? He's so large he couldn't possibly be human."

"His name is Jidanbou." Yoruichi enlightened the others, "He's an elite in the Soul Society. The guard of the western gate of the Seireitei."

Uryuu narrowed his eyes, "That means we're going to have to work together to defeat this monster and get past the gate…"

Yoruichi nodded, "Exactly, but it isn't going to be a simple task." 'It would be easy if Naruto was here. I can't risk transforming yet for no reason.' Leaving that as just a thought, Yoruichi kept speaking, "He's been a guardian for 300 years and until now no one has ever passed him to make it inside. One swing of his axe will obliterate you. He's the legendary Hercules of this world." Yoruichi then shouted over to Ichigo, "Ichigo retreat and we'll come up with a plan!" That course of action was cut short when Chad and Orihime ran ahead to assist Ichigo, "Didn't you two hear me?"

'We're coming to help you Kurosaki-kun.' Orihime thought as she ran to assist Ichigo.

Seeing them coming, Jidanbou slammed his axe on the ground and fractured it, forming a wall to keep them from assisting Ichigo, "Your behavior sickens me." He said to the others, "This city has rules you uncivilized people. First, you must wash your hands when you come back home. Second you must never eat food that has fallen on the ground. Third, a duel is one-on-one, no one else is to get involved. Therefore my opponent is the spiky-haired kid. Just stay out there until I am done." He stated firmly.

Chad pointed at the wall and spoke quietly, "Orihime I'll make a hole in the wall. Take that chance and attack him."

"Trying to come up with a sneak attack?" Jidanbou questioned testily, surprising them with his good hearing.

"Oi! Chad, Inoue!" Ichigo's voice sounded out over the wall.

"Kurosaki-kun are you hurt?" Orihime questioned worriedly, "Hold on a second, we're almost there!"

"Ah I'm fine!" Ichigo yelled back, "But I wanted to talk to you guys about that. You and Chad just stay there, alright? Don't do anything!"

Before Orihime could say anything, Uryuu ran up to the wall, "What are you talking about? You've seen how strong this guy is! I don't care what you've learned over the past few days, you can't handle this by yourself!"

"Oh! There you are Ishida!" Ichigo yelled back as if he had been wondering where everyone else was.

"I've been here since the beginning stupid!" Uryuu shouted, losing his patience.

"…" Ichigo replied in a low-key manner, "You're really noisy."

Chad spoke to Ichigo calmly through the wall, "Can you win?"

Ichigo rubbed his neck and looked at Jidanbou from his side of the wall, "Possibly." Uryuu's yelling from the other side forced a tick mark of annoyance onto Ichigo's head.

"What the hell is your malfunction Kurosaki? Do you realize the situation you're in right now?"

"So damn noisy…" Ichigo remarked under his breath, "I said don't worry. Do you even know what I've been doing for 10 days? The original plan was for me to take all of that time to recover, but it only took 5 instead. So during the 5 days I had left what do you think I did?" He waited for an answer but only got silence, "Fighting of course! In those 5 days and nights I fought with Geta-Boushi."

Uryuu figured that he understood now, "So he taught you battle skills-?"

"Nope!" Ichigo said, butting in and keeping him from finishing his incorrect thought, "He didn't teach me a single thing. But now I've got tons of raw battle experience and power!" He took the wrapped sword off of his back to reveal a large oversized cleaver that had no hilt or guard. It was just as tall as Ichigo himself with a black blade and silver edge. He looked at Jidanbou and smirked, "I'm ready. I don't remember asking you to wait for me though."

"Are you finished?" Jidanbou said disdainfully, "It seems that you are just as uncivilized as those others. Such a disrespectful boy." He lifted his axe into the air, "I wasted all of that time waiting on you… You should be grateful!" He shouted as he slammed his axe down, cracking the ground with the force it hit with, but he didn't feel the normal amount of give that he otherwise thought he would have, "Wait, how did you-?"

Ichigo was holding back his axe with his sword in one hand, "I wasn't ready yet. That wasn't exactly courteous you know." He quipped at his enemy.

Jidanbou began to let out booming laughter, amused at Ichigo, "You aren't too bad at all! It's been quite a while since anyone could block my axe! Now I can finally use all of my strength!" He lifted his axe again, "Good luck kiddo! Until now there have been only three people who could block my axe including you, but the ones who can block my second are absolutely zero!" He slammed it down on Ichigo who blocked again, "Good! But I'm not finished yet, die! Jutsu Pon Jidan Damatsuri Da (Jidan 10-Hit Festival)!"

Jidanbou began swinging away at Ichigo, "One! Two! Three! Four! Five! Six! Seven! Seven! Eight! Er…Five! Six!" He lifted his axe one more time high over his head, "It's almost done, ten!" He swung his axe to the side and cleaved the top off of the wall he had put up to keep others out.

When the dust from the flurry of attacks died down however, Ichigo stood unharmed with his sword over his shoulder touching the ground and blocking his side, "How are you still standing?" Jidanbou asked in shock.

"Are you done yet?" Ichigo said coldly, setting a piercing gaze on Jidanbou, "Because it's my turn now!" He said, preparing an attack.

"No! I'm not finished yet!" Jidanbou said, lifting his axe again and pulling out a second one, "My final attack! Banzai Jidan Damatsuri (10,000 Year Hit Festival)!"

"Sorry but I'm going to have to destroy those axes." Ichigo said just as Jidanbou moved to slam his attacks down on him once more. Ichigo countered with a swing of his own sword and made good on his threat as he destroyed both axes with one swing, sending the large warrior falling onto his back as well.

Jidanbou looked up at the sky before blinking and rolling himself back to his feet, "That was dangerous! A minor distraction and I found myself on the ground!" He noticed Ichigo's strange facial expression, "Did you think you had won? I won't go down so easily to a guy like you! Now let's finish this with my-!" He held up an arm only to find a handle in his hand, "-Axe? My axe! Where is my axe?" He began crying pitifully and throwing a temper tantrum at having his axes broken.

Ichigo actually felt guilty about what he had done, "Uh this is kind of strange to say, but sorry about that. I guess I could have only broken one and left you with the other… my bad."

Jidanbou stopped sobbing and looked at Ichigo, "You're such a good guy!" He started blubbering again, "I'm an enemy, I lost the battle, but you still care about me! So generous!" He placed a hand on Ichigo's shoulder, making the teen Shinigami incredibly uncomfortable, "And here I am crying like a baby because of a broken axe!" He suddenly threw his arms in the air, "In over 300 years I have never been so thoroughly defeated. You have my permission to enter the western gate of the Seireitei! What is your name young warrior?"

Ichigo pointed at himself, "Kurosaki Ichigo."

"Strawberry…What a lovely name." Jidanbou commented as he turned towards the gate. Ichigo had to be held back by Chad from attacking the already defeated gate guardian, "I don't know why you want to go through this gate Ichigo, but take care of yourself, everyone inside is powerful."

Ichigo stopped struggling and nodded, "I know."

Jidanbou grabbed the bottom of the gate and began to lift, "Well if you're sure you're prepared then I will open the gate for you." With a great show of strength, Jidanbou hoisted the massive gate high up over his head for Ichigo and the others to pass through, shocking everyone who had witnessed the feat. However once he got it up he simply froze in fear at something he saw in front of him.

Ichigo peeked around the giant and saw a man with silver hair, closed eyes, a grin on his face, and a Shinigami outfit as well as an extra haori over the usual clothing, "Who is this guy?" He asked.

"Ichimaru Gin!" Jidanbou said fearfully, "Captain of the 3rd Division!"

Gin spoke directly to Jidanbou in a light scolding manner, "Ah, this isn't allowed." Before anyone could even do anything or before anyone knew what happened, with a swift motion the arm of Jidanbou was cut off, "That's too bad, but you're a gatekeeper. Your duty is to guard the gate, not open it." He said, without any actual malice in his voice at all.

The loss of his arm caused Jidanbou to scream in pain and lose his hold on the open gate, all the while blood from the open wound rained down. He still managed to hold the gate open however, with one hand on the gate and his shoulders keeping it up, "No wonder you're one of the Soul Society elites." Gin mentioned casually, "Even with a missing arm you can still hold the gate open. However, you are still a failure as a guardian."

'Ichimaru-taichou…' Yoruichi thought as the scene unfolded, 'I didn't expect anyone like this to show themselves so soon. Even though they're all very strong his strength is beyond their imagination! If they fight here the worst may occur!'

"I opened it because I lost." Jidanbou said wearily, "The guardian opens the gate when he loses. It is only natural."

"Did you make that idiotic rule up yourself?" Gin remarked amusedly, "You obviously misunderstood. Even if a gate guardian loses he still may not open the door. If a guardian loses…" The aura around Gin grew murderous, "…He must be executed." In a flash, Ichigo attacked in order to keep Jidanbou from being injured any further, clashing swords with the captain before breaking away.

Yoruichi's jaw was left slacked by how brazen Ichigo was, 'The kid just moved at him on his own…'

"What do you think you're doing you bastard?" Ichigo questioned Gin.

Yoruichi shouted at Ichigo instead of letting Gin reply, "What do you think _you're_ doing?"

"We beat Jidanbou fair and square and then you just pop up out of nowhere and attack us?" Ichigo said to Gin, almost seething, "Inoue, I want you to look after Jidanbou's arm." He asked of her, getting a nod from Orihime, "If you want to fight so bad then I'll be your opponent. If you attack unarmed allies so easily then I'll have to rip you apart in revenge."

"You're interesting." Gin said about Ichigo, "Aren't you afraid of me?"

"Hell no!" Ichigo said angrily in response, "Absolutely not!"

"Stop messing around Ichigo! Let's retreat for now! Yoruichi nearly pleaded. Getting into a fight with a captain-level Shinigami in the first few hours of being here wasn't exactly on the to-do list.

'Ichigo?' Gin said in his head as he got a look at Ichigo's physical make, 'Orange hair… sword as long as his height…' "So you're Kurosaki Ichigo? Huh, so he does exist after all."

Ichigo looked at him in confusion, "Do you know me?" He said before he noticed Gin had turned and started walking away, "Oi! Where are you going?"

Not turning to face him, Gin spoke, "Well if that's the case then I definitely cannot let you pass."

"What the hell are you walking away for then?" Ichigo questioned before deciding to make a crack on him to provoke him, "What are you planning on doing, throwing that knife at me?" Oh, he didn't know at all… poor bastard.

Gin held his sword out to the side, "It's not called a knife… this is my Zanpakutou." He quickly set himself in a sideward stance, tucking the blade under his left arm and pointing it at Ichigo, "Ikorose, Shinsou (Shoot to kill, God Spear)." Gin's sword rapidly extended at Ichigo with intent to impale him.

Ichigo held up his own Zanpakutou in defense but ended up getting pushed back into Jidanbou, throwing them both outside of the gate. The gate began to close as his sword retracted. Gin peeked out under the bottom of it and waved at everyone, "Bye bye now!" He said pleasantly right before it slammed shut.

"Kurosaki-kun!" Orihime shouted as she, Chad, and Uryuu ran towards the downed Shinigami who was motionless on the ground.

Ichigo suddenly popped up, "Damn it that hurt!" He yelled surprising everyone that had moved to his side to check if he was hurt or not, "Where is that bastard? He nearly killed me! Aarrgh!"

'He still seems lively.' Uryuu thought as he saw Ichigo bitching to himself about Gin, 'He took that attack head on and he's still just fine… I'll say it again, scary guy.' He looked at Ichigo's new sword, 'Is that how he did it? I think he called it Zangetsu, his new Zanpakutou.

Ichigo stood up and looked at Yoruichi who had walked up to him, "Sorry, because of me the door closed again."

"Forget it." Yoruichi dismissed his apology, "There's no point in dwelling on it now. Although the door is shut again, the results would have been potentially worse had you passed through. That was Ichimaru Gin, just be glad you weren't injured.

"Huh… so my clone was right. You guys finally showed up. Took you long enough."

They all looked up onto a nearby building to see Naruto crouched with a dry look on his features as he waved disenchantedly, "Yo. Did you guys know that you are incredibly slow? I was hauling ass through that Dangai place. What happened to all of you? I thought you were all supposed to be right behind me."

"Naruto!" Everyone exclaimed, having actually forgotten about him with everything that happened, "Where have you been?" Yoruichi scolded, "I thought you had been killed when you went through!"

Naruto shook his head, a distinct lack of humor or good nature on his face "No, don't you give me that, something exploded when I made it through and I couldn't look back. Do you know how long I've been waiting for you guys to show up? I got sick of waiting and thought you had all died." He then pointed at the downed Jidanbou and the closed gate, "I tried that too when I first got here. I kicked another giant guy's ass on the east side of this place, I didn't land here. I can't open that gate either or even get inside so I've just been messing around out here trying to think of something."

"How long have you been here?" Yoruichi asked after jumping on the roof he was sitting on, perching on his shoulder and whispering to him, not wanting to alert anyone else.

Naruto answered quietly, "I've been here for quite a while waiting on all of you."

"Hmm." Yoruichi remarked, "Time must have been displaced due to what happened with Orihime's barrier and the Koutotsu. We might be able to take advantage of this later, just keep it to yourself for now okay?" Naruto nodded as they continued to watch Orihime work on Jidanbou's arm, as the villagers came out to interact with them all, "So what have you been doing by yourself. Staying out of trouble I hope."

Naruto grinned, "Of course. I know how to be discreet. I had to exist as an immortal on earth and move when I needed to so I'm an old hand at blending in." His eyes took on a more glassy tint, "I just had to spend some time looking around for something."

Yoruichi blinked, "What were you looking for?"

Naruto's eyes panned over to Yoruichi's golden ones, "I wanted to see the friends that first left me behind so long ago. *sigh* I couldn't find any of them… This place is so big even with my Kage Bunshin I couldn't go everywhere. I couldn't even ask about them no matter where I looked. They had lives of their own, and while I'm very happy I can't bring myself to show it. But then I saw that this place had old people and memorials… and I realized that they must have passed on here as well."

Yoruichi flinched for him and wrapped a tail around his neck, "You really have been alive for a long time haven't you? If that's the case then they must have been far older than 2500 years old in this realm."

Naruto looked at his hands and clinched his fists, "Uh huh… probably. I lost count of how long I've been alive. It's way longer than the modern calendar for sure. Way longer. I didn't know people died here too. What makes this place so different from the realm of the living except for the lifespan? I can't find much of a difference at all."

Yoruichi didn't know how to respond, "That's a very hard question to answer for one that has seen so much of the living world like you. Maybe you can find out? But if it makes you feel any better they reincarnated." Naruto looked at her hopefully, "Obviously they would have no ties to their past lives, but their souls would cycle back to Earth."

She didn't get a response from Naruto who stopped talking and simply looked at the others talk to the villagers below, "Are you going to be alright?" Yoruichi asked him.

Naruto looked over at the cat giving him a worried look and gave a wide grin, "Oh yeah, I'll be fine! I can't get all down in the dumps now can I? I'm your ace aren't I? What good would I be to everyone getting down about this here?" He stood up and looked at the sky, "So what if they're dead? All I've ever wanted was to keep my precious people safe and happy, and I did that! I'll never forget them for as long as I exist and that's how I'll keep them alive. Every time I use a jutsu, and every time I wear my old village's symbol that means that they're still alive, even if it's just in here." He said, pointing at his heart.

Yoruichi smiled at him, "Well that's a very strong way to look at things."

Naruto shook his head, "Not particularly, I've gone this long without them… it hurts every now and then but there's nothing I can do. I'm not a god Yoruichi, all I can do is keep going. I'll never catch up to them now so it doesn't matter anymore. So what's the plan boss? How are we getting in, because I'm drawing a blank. Even touching the walls of that gate suck my power away."

"I'll let them rest for now." Yoruichi said, curling up on his shoulder and shutting her eyes, "I have a plan but I need to ask around for some information on someone. Would you care to accompany me while the others get used to the Soul Society since you've been here long enough to get the gist of things? You can tell me about your friends while we look."

Naruto chuckled and started walking along the rooftops, "Well if you want… so let's see, where should I start? Okay I've got it. When I first became a ninja as a kid I was placed on this team with two other kids and a sensei. Now this one girl, Haruno Sakura, was rather pretty and had pink hair and I had a crush on her… never worked out for me. Go figure, but just so you know, you're way hotter than her when she was grown up Yoruichi. _Way hotter_. But then there was this other kid, Uchiha Sasuke… *laughs* what a douche."

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**Okay. So here we go. Things should be very simple to understand. As far as I'm concerned, Naruto's jinchuuriki form equals Visored Hollowfication mode. Tons of similarities; they both can't hold the forms forever, the power increase when used is totally dramatic enough to physically affect those around them that are weak, and they both occur from forcibly ripping the power from the creatures they keep within. Naruto + Kyuubi = Visored + Hollow. Savvy? **

**About Naruto's forms… well something else equals something else, but I'm not spilling that one yet. It should be blatantly obvious though.**

**I will be doing a lot of stuff with the Visoreds… because they are all fucking awesome and I love each and every one of them. **

**I will do either one or two more chapters of this before placing it in my usual rotation as it will have enough of a base for the time being. So… yeah.**

**Kenchi out. Bye bye now!**


	4. The Sound of Madness

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. I am currently holding a puppy ransom, the price for his freedom will be complete and total ownership of either franchise. Failure to comply with my demand will result in- OWWW! Son of a bitch he bit me! Fine you stupid dog, I didn't need you anyway! You would have been made!

**Chapter 4: The Sound of Madness**

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After being relieved from healing Jidanbou, Orihime was accompanied by Ichigo inside of a nearby house that offered them and the others a place to stay for the night. Upon entering they found Chad and Uryuu already inside as well as the old man who owned the home and seemed to be the community leader of sorts.

"Ichigo. Orihime." Chad said plainly in acknowledgement.

"Hey Chad." Ichigo said in return to his large friend of Mexican descent.

Uryuu was sitting along the far wall of the room as they came in, "So the only ones left here that need to show up are Yoruichi and that Naruto character." Uryuu adjusted the glasses on his face, "I still don't know what to make of him. We don't know the first thing about him and yet here he is on this endeavor to save Rukia."

Ichigo rubbed the back of his head, "I don't know what to make of the guy but he's definitely strong from what we saw the one time, and Yoruichi seems to trust him. Yeah he's weird, but the rest of us aren't exactly normal either when you think about it."

"I think we should at least give him a chance." Orihime said trying to give some kind of support to the least known member of the unit, "He's here which means he's willing to fight just as hard as any of us, and he seems nice enough. I think we should just get to know him!"

Uryuu nodded, though he still wasn't in unanimous agreement to trust Naruto, 'I need to keep an eye on this person. We don't even know what his powers are or who he's affiliated with. He doesn't seem to work for Yoruichi or Urahara-san and he's no Shinigami, of that I'm certain.'

Yoruichi then walked into house, "Ah, everyone's already here. That's good."

Naruto followed shortly behind hugging himself tightly with a pleased grin on his face, "Ah I feel so awesome!"

Ichigo looked at Naruto who was happily patting down his own person, as happy as a child with a new toy, "What's with him?" He asked Yoruichi.

"Naruto didn't have any weapons on him." Yoruichi admitted to the other as she took a seat in the middle of the room, "But somehow, and I have no clue how he did it, he found a blacksmith that was able to design some weapons for him which he just came back from picking up." The others just nodded, not knowing what weapons Naruto had, but Yoruichi did because she had seen them. She also knew how many he truly had on him, both in variety and quantity and that's what was driving her up the wall, 'How long was he here for before we showed up?' Yoruichi wondered.

Uryuu looked at Naruto who happily took a seat in the middle of the room next to Yoruichi, "What kind of weapons do you use Naruto-san?"

Naruto looked at Uryuu, "Honestly, I don't need a weapon, I haven't for years. My entire body is my weapon. But then I realized that these Shinigami like to use swords and I don't feel like screwing around with that." He shot his arm out to the side and a small blade emerged from his sleeve into his hand. It was a small black dagger the size of his hand with a handle wrapped in a thin cloth. At the end of the handle there was a small ring, "This is a kunai."

Ichigo looked at the weapon intently, "What can you do with a little thing like that?" It didn't look like much. What could it really do against the swords that the Shinigami all ran around with? It looked like it would crack under a decent amount of pressure.

Naruto flipped the kunai in his hand to a stabbing grip, "It's really an all-purpose weapon. My immediate go-to, my utility blade… the shinobi Swiss-army knife if you will, call it what you want. I can throw it, fight directly with it, or use it to kill you before you even know I'm there." He finished with a dark look that unnerved the teenagers in the room until Naruto started laughing, "Oh man that was good." His face then turned serious again, "But seriously, I can kill you with this thing."

Orihime moved near him to get a look at his weapon, "But that's all that you have? Kurosaki-kun only has his one weapon too, but it's big!"

Naruto patted Orihime on the head, "This is just my most basic weapon." He said, retracting the kunai back into his sleeve, "I never said it was my only one." He opened his jacket to reveal a mass of kanji seals written on the inside of his jacket. A quick summon and in a puff of smoke Naruto was holding a large curved blade by the ring at the end of it. As the others moved to get a closer look, Naruto suddenly folded it open to reveal a wicked windmill-bladed looking weapon, "This is another favorite. The fuuma shuriken." He resealed back into his jacket, "Yep, I have a lot of stuff to use."

Yoruichi let off a sweatdrop as she saw Naruto showing of his wares to the hapless would-be rescuers, "I think that's enough Naruto. You're making the kids nervous. Now everyone come here, I want to discuss our plan for tonight and tomorrow."

Naruto gave the black cat a salute and plopped back down on the floor, "So tell them the plan. Another gate won't work because I already tried the one on the east side… Your guardian opened the door after you won, I beat up mine so bad that it wasn't even an option."

Yoruichi shook her feline head, "No. No more gate work. Breaking in like that wasn't a good idea in the first place." Ichigo turned away with an aura of gloom around him.

"So what about these other gates that Naruto was talking about?" Chad suggested.

Yoruichi shook her head, "No, they are at least 10 days away." 'Which makes me wonder again just how long he's been here! Orihime's barrier hitting the tunnel guardian must have seriously disrupted time for him if he started all the way on the east side and still wound up here when we arrived!' The others caught on to her thought and looked over at Naruto who was playing with the mechanism in his jacket sleeve that produced a hidden kunai in his hand.

Naruto noticed them looking at him, "What?"

"Um… how long have you been here?" Orihime asked for the group.

Naruto shrugged, "Not that long." '-In relativity of time towards an immortal that is.' He didn't vocally state that last part, "But that's not important!" He said loudly, trying to change the subject, "Yoruichi, you were talking?"

"Right." Yoruichi picked up right where she left off from, "If we tried that we would just be wasting a lot of time that we don't have. But don't worry. If we can't get in using a gate we'll just have to get in without using a gate."

"What?" Everyone else asked in confusion before Naruto smirked as Yoruichi had told him her plan.

"I need to find someone." The cat said before turning to the older man in the room, "Elder-dono, do you know where I can find Shiba Kuukaku? The place used to be around here in the past, but when I went with Naruto earlier I couldn't find it." She admitted as the man pondered.

He finally realized who she was referencing, "No, can it be that you plan to use _that way_ to get into the Seireitei?"

"What? What way are you guys talking about?" Ichigo asked until a sound of trotting footsteps outside started rumbling out, "What is that sound?" Suddenly the front door was knocked down by a man flying through it, "Who the hell is that? Did this guy break in?"

Uryuu looked over at the door awkwardly, "It's a wild pig. A wild pig just ran into here."

The man stood up, "Man… I got thrown off my boar again." He then gave a gesture of greeting towards the elder, "Yo. Long time no see old man." The person was muscular and tall. He wore a vest, a scarf, a bandanna, and a pair of goggles.

Naruto took note of the new arrival and gave him a thumbs-up, "Nice goggles random guy!" The stranger acknowledged Naruto with a thumbs-up and a grin of his own.

The elder immediately yelled in alarm, "Ganju what are you doing here? Go back home!"

Ganju played it off harmlessly, "It's just that I haven't seen you in a while so I came by, but you're kicking me out already? You're scaring the guests too, don't be so impolite."

"That's because of you!" The elder snapped back.

Ganju looked around and took notice of everyone in the room before his gaze stuck on Ichigo who was looking at him warily, "What? What's wrong, what are you staring at?"

Ganju took his goggles off to properly survey what he was seeing, "What's a punk-ass Shinigami doing here?" He got in Ichigo's face and started patting his cheek in a spiteful manner, "I asked you a question. What's a punk-ass Shinigami like you doing in a place like this?" He finished, pulling on Ichigo's face.

Ichigo of course, had enough and decked Ganju in the face, sending him flying across the room, "Why the hell did you punch me Dandelion-head? Are you trying to pick a fight?" Ganju yelled as he got back up.

"That's my line you pig-riding barbarian!" Ichigo snapped back at Ganju, his patience long since faded, "Who the hell do you think you are suddenly barging in here like that?"

Orihime stood off to the side having a mini-freak out, "Oh no, they're going to fight. What should I do? I have to stop them!"

"Aw, let 'em fight Orihime." Naruto said from nearby, "It's the fastest way that men get over being angry. That, and I haven't seen anyone _else_ have a good fight in forever."

The elder let out a desperate sigh, "It's just as I thought…"

"What do you mean 'just as you thought'?" Uryuu asked the old man, not getting what Ganju's problem was, "Who is this guy supposed to be Elder-dono?"

Ganju scoffed, "You don't know who I am? You sure are an ignorant Shinigami." A smirk came to his face, "Alright, I'll tell you then." He pointed his thumbs at himself, "My name is Ganju! Self-declared 'Crimson Bullet of West Rukongai', self declared number one 'Man That Is the Boss of West Rukongai for 14 years', and also 'The Number One Shinigami-Hater in West Rukongai'!" With that, he tackled Ichigo hard outside into the streets.

Uryuu and Orihime moved to back Ichigo up when a group of four men stood in the path of the door, "Don't interfere when our boss is teaching someone a lesson. If you really want to get involved you have to go through us first."

Uryuu grit his teeth, "So you're just underlings of that Ganju guy."

Orihime noticed something else, "They're all riding on boars…"

Chad moved to the door, "You said we had to fight you to get past. What about him?" He pointed behind them where Naruto was sitting on the ground gleefully watching Ichigo and Ganju about to get into it.

"You'd better leave this place!" Ganju shouted at a downed Ichigo, "As long as I live I'm not letting a Shinigami reside in this district!" His reply from Ichigo was a straw sandal to the face in the form of a kick that sent him flying backwards.

"Holy shit!" Naruto cried excitedly, "In the face! _In the face!_" The underlings of Ganju cried their leader's name in worry after Ichigo's attack.

"That's enough out of you." Ichigo said, getting up properly off of the ground, "You didn't even hear me out, you just go around hitting people. Even if you really wanted to fight me you're not good enough to be my opponent."

Naruto nodded sagely from his spot on the street, "That's the exact reason why I don't feel like fighting you Ichigo. Well said."

Ichigo turned to Naruto with a twitching eyebrow, "I don't really need you interjecting here."

Ganju stood back up holding his nose where Ichigo had hit him, "That's twice now. Twice that you've punched my handsome face!"

"I kicked you the second time idiot!" Ichigo said right back to him.

Naruto grinned, "Maybe he implied it as you punching his face in with your foot?"

"That's enough Ichigo!" Yoruichi said as she walked outside, "Don't waste your energy on a meaningless fight!" She stopped next to Naruto when Ichigo didn't back down, "Honestly… getting angry over a tiny situation like this… stupid kid."

Naruto cast an innocent look over at her, "Well, you could always transform and stop him yourself." He suggested with a stupid look crossing his face after finishing his sentence.

Yoruichi rolled her eyes, "I'm fast enough that the only person here that might be able to see me would be you. _Maybe_ you, so you wouldn't get anything out of it."

Ganju stared at Ichigo intently, "If you aren't going to leave Shinigami then it seems that you and I are simply destined to fight!" He said as he drew a small cleaver looking weapon from his back.

"Ganju stop it!" The elder tried reasoning, "He is not a bad Shinigami!"

"Shut up!" He snapped back at the old man, "You should know very well that a Shinigami is a Shinigami. There are no good ones or bad ones!" He started running at Ichigo, "Here I come Shinigami!"

Uryuu saw this as a potentially bad situation, "Damn, Kurosaki didn't bring his Zanpakutou!"

Naruto watched Ganju start to charge and remarked to Yoruichi, "Should I throw him a kunai and see if he sinks or swims with it?" Yoruichi face-faulted in cat form next to him.

Chad then ran from inside the house and tossed Ichigo his wrapped up Zangetsu that Ichigo caught and immediately unfurled, "Thanks Chad!"

"Boo Chad." Naruto said, "Outside interference is strictly forbidden!" Naruto said before Yoruichi slashed him hard across the face with her claws, "Fuck! Why does that hurt so much!"

Yoruichi blew on her claws, "That's what you get for being a dumbass."

Ganju still came forward with his attack, forcing Ichigo to block a horizontal slash by stabbing his sword into the ground to cover the side of his body, "Don't think that with a larger blade you'll be able to beat me!" Ganju made a circular motion with his front leg and stomped on the ground before making a gesture with his free arm, "Sink down!" The ground softened to the extent that Ichigo's sword was caught in it.

"What's going on?" Ichigo wondered as his sword suddenly began sinking into the ground, "It's like quicksand!" While he was worried about his sword, Ganju jumped and kicked him in the side of the head, sending him rolling down the street, 'What was that weird trick?'

Ganju stepped in front of Ichigo who had made it back to his knees and kicked him in the chest, however Ichigo caught his foot and punched him in the face, dropping him to the ground, "I don't need Zangetsu to beat you. I was stronger than one of the toughest girls in Japan before middle school in karate!"

Ganju got up and attempted an overhead chop with his weapon that Ichigo stopped by catching his arm at the wrist and disarming him before punching him in the face again. The punch sent Ganju stumbling back, but had Ichigo shaking out his hand, "That didn't knock him out? I just hit him as hard as I could… tough guy."

Naruto chuckled at Ichigo's disbelief as the scratch marks on his face vanished, "It's probably your hands. You've got them baby hands."

Ganju wiped the blood away from his face, "Punk…"

"No!" One of Ganju's underlings shouted, "Boss bad news!" He turned around to reveal a clock on his back that read 9 p.m., "It's not good boss! It's already 9 o'clock!"

"Shit, 9 o'clock?" Ganju said rather fearfully before letting out a whistle, "Come here Bonnie-chan!"

'Bonnie-chan?' Ichigo wondered to himself, before Ganju's large boar jumped over his head and slammed into Ganju before the man climbed atop the animal, "Wait, you're leaving? Don't run away!"

"I never said I was running away Dandelion-Head! I just have somewhere to be, so wait here until I come back!" Ganju shouted as he began riding off with his friends, "Come on you idiots! Why didn't you warn me sooner?"

Ichigo stared at Ganju angrily, unable to conjure words to express how pissed he was. While Ganju began to disappear into the distance as Uryuu walked over and put a hand on his shoulder, "Let it go Kurosaki. I'm speechless too."

XxX

(The Next Day

"You didn't have to scratch me Yoruichi…" Ichigo muttered, rubbing the wound that ran horizontal across his face. The group of rescuers were walking along the outskirts of the village towards a destination Yoruichi wasn't divulging at the moment, "Are really supposed to be going out here? We're really far away from the town."

Uryuu had dealt with Ichigo's complaining since that had set out this morning, "Shut up, damn! According to the map the elder gave us, it's around here someplace. If you don't like it then you take the lead."

Orihime decided to throw her own thought in, "But since that Kuukaku guy is the only one that knows how to enter Seirietei without going through the main door why not live in the village with the others and be praised for it?"

"That's a good point." Uryuu admitted.

"No it isn't." Naruto replied in a bored and obvious fashion, "Why would you live right next to the place that you know how to get into illegally, especially when that place is teeming with soldiers that can come and find you while you're being praised for that kind of thing? The Seireitei has a big-ass gate surrounding it and four gigantic guards that kill anyone that gets close. Clearly tourism isn't very high on their list of priorities."

"That's not it either Naruto." Yoruichi replied in a dry tone, "With Kuukaku's personality he would probably like this kind of place better than in the village. Fewer people and it's quieter out here." Naruto walked with a dejected cloud over his head for being caught over-thinking something, "It's alright though. Even though the address keeps on changing the houses themselves always have the same theme. I can tell with one look." The cat perked up suddenly, "Ah, I can see it, it's over there."

Uryuu and Ichigo looked at the house in shock, "This is… This is…"

"This is awesome!" Naruto yelled as he took note of the house. It was a quaint looking place with a weird giant tube thing in the backyard and a pair of massive stone arms holding up a banner specifying who lived here.

Yoruichi seemed rather pleased at the appearance of the house, "See? You can tell in one glance right?"

Naruto nodded fervently, "I've got to meet the person that set all of this up and shake their hand. This is fantastic!" He said before running up to the door before a voice stopped him.

"Hold on!" Two large, similar looking men jumped from the backside of the roof and landed in front of Naruto and the others, "A bunch of weird looking people, and one of them is a Shinigami! We can't let suspicious people like you lurk about!"

"Get out!" The other man said, "Or you will die here!"

Naruto sighed and started cracking his knuckles, "Does anyone mind if I take this one? All of this walking has left me really bored." Yoruichi hopped on his shoulder, keeping him from moving to take any action.

"Yoruichi-dono?" One of the large men stated in realization.

Naruto looked at the cat on his shoulder oddly, "Even as just a cat apparently you've got stroke in the Soul Society huh?"

XxX

The two large men led them inside down a large staircase to a lower level, "Please forgive us. We didn't think Yoruichi-dono would travel with such rabble ."

"It's okay." Yoruichi said cheerfully as she descended the stairs leading the other visitors along, "I didn't notice you guys at first either so it's my fault too."

"Please wait here for a moment." One of the large men said as he walked towards a sliding door.

"Is it Koganehiko?" A voice called loudly from behind the door, "It seems we have a rare guest… Hurry and open the door! Don't be slow!" The man fearfully opened the door to reveal a woman sitting on a mat surrounded by pillows. She was a rather youthful looking woman with long, messy black hair partly covered in bandages. She had on a white skirt and a provocative red robe that exposed much of her cleavage. She was missing her right arm and had a prosthetic in its place, "Hello Yoruichi, long time no see!"

"Kuukaku is a woman?" The teens exclaimed in shock.

"And one hell of one from the looks of things!" Naruto said, eyes drifting between her chest and her face as he didn't really want to get caught leering at the person he was a guest of.

Kuukaku looked at them strangely, "Who are these kids?" She asked Yoruichi.

Naruto grinned, "I thought no one would ever ask me that question." He admitted, moving ahead of everyone else, "But I am no mere child like these others my dear, I'm a man… and not just any man! I am-!" Naruto was cut off by Yoruichi headbutting him in the face, "Damn it! I haven't gotten to do the introduction in one hundred years! I've got a new set-up and self-titles and everything!"

Yoruichi ignored him and walked towards Kuukaku, "Actually Kuukaku, I came today to ask you a favor."

Kuukaku rolled her eyes, "I thought so. It's always the same thing every time you come see me. Is it really complicated?" Yoruichi nodded, "Ha! It's been a long time since we've had this kind of conversation." She then smirked, "So then go ahead and tell me. I love complicated stuff."

XxX

(After a Short Explanation)

"I see…" Kuukaku said as she smoked a pipe, "Alright I accept the job." Ignoring the looks of disbelief from Ichigo and company she kept speaking, "Since Urahara is a part of this I can't really refuse. However, even though I trust you doesn't mean I trust these kids."

Naruto nodded in understanding, "Okay. I can pay you. Money is absolutely no object at the moment."

Yoruichi sighed, "Naruto, money from the world of the living is completely useless here-." She stopped when Naruto unsealed a scroll full of bills, "Where did you get all of that?" She asked him, almost in a screeching voice, 'How long has he been here?'

Naruto started stacking bills, "That is not important right now."

Kuukaku waved Naruto off, "I don't need any money, I already decided to do this as a favor to Yoruichi, but I would like to send one of my men with you just to make sure that you can all be trusted. Any objections?" She asked, standing up.

"Of course not." Yoruichi replied.

"He's my little brother." Kuukaku said as she walked over to another ornate sliding door in the room, "He's kind of a punk, but he's alright. Oi! You ready?" She yelled to the person behind the door.

"Just give me a second!" The voice replied frenetically, "Okay Onee-sama, I've got it!" The door slid open to reveal the man from last night that had attacked Ichigo, "Hello everyone, my name is Shiba Ganju, nice to meet you!"

"Ah, it's you!" Ichigo and Ganju both yelled at each other upon realizing who the other was.

"You know each other?" Kuukaku said in confusion.

Naruto appeared at her side with a grin on his face, "You want to see something hilarious? Watch this." Naruto displayed two pebbles that he flicked at both Ganju and Ichigo's heads with pinpoint accuracy. That was all the catalyst that was needed to continue their little dispute from the night before.

XxX

(Ten Minutes Later)

The novelty of watching Ichigo and Ganju beat the crap out each other wore out quickly. Naruto let out a yawn, "This isn't as funny as it was last night."

"That's enough!" Kuukaku shouted, stopping Ganju and Ichigo's physical violence with some of her own, "What the hell is the matter with you two? You've been fighting since the second you saw each other!"

"Ow…" Ichigo mumbled as he started getting up off of the ground, "Jumping a guy out of nowhere… like brother like sister."

Ganju pointed at Ichigo accusingly, "But Onee-sama he was the one that-!"

Kuukaku kicked him in the face, shutting him up, "You'd talk back to me?" She then turned to Ichigo and grabbed him by the head, "Hey punk, this is my home! If you don't like the way I run things then get the hell out!"

Naruto watched the scene in near stitches, "Why is it that every woman I meet is probably capable of kicking my ass? It's like a theme that never dies."

Ichigo was quick to heel to Kuukaku's will and turned to Ganju once she started walking away, "Your sister is scary…"

XxX

(Hours Later)

In order to get into the Seireitei, which had a barrier erected around it due to the gate that would keep out attacks from above and below, Kuukaku would fire them from the tube in the backyard… which was a fireworks launcher. In order for them all to have even a fighting chance of surviving such a thing, they all needed to be able to focus their Reiryoku and form a protective cannonball that would then be fired. It was harder than it sounded, as if no one could make the ball they would be blown to bits in the attempt to do so, which lead to them having to train and get it right.

Uryuu, Chad, and Orihime all got the process down quickly enough, as did Naruto, since despite his vast amount of chakra once you dug into his reserves of Reiryoku it was halved, and that made it far easier for him to control.

Ichigo had gotten this gist of it after Ganju let Ichigo in on his shortcut to control his energy, but because it was so tough for him to keep control of his energy he was forced to refine his technique.

"I'm sick of practicing this Uzumaki!" Ichigo said as he held onto a strange orb, "I've gotten the technique down, it will be fine. I need to get ready to head into the Seireitei." He held his stomach, "Ow, my stomach hurts." He complained before Naruto smacked him over the back of the legs with a kendo stick, "Ow!"

"Ouch is not an acceptable Ki-yah at this dojo!" Naruto yelled at Ichigo before hitting him again, prompting him to stand up, "There is no fear in this dojo!" He started pacing around, "You have just as much power in comparison to me as a kid… the downside to that is that much like me as a kid you absolutely suck at controlling it and that's very bad in this case." "

"That doesn't explain why I'm still here working you bastard!" Ichigo snapped at him before flinching when Naruto threatened swinging the kendo stick again.

Naruto continued his reasoning, "You see the lives of me and everyone around me never really banked on my shoddy control so I had time to neglect it and work on it over time of which now I have adequate control, you do not have nearly enough time to get good control so we're going to patch you up like a leaky ship to get you to the next dock by making you as tired as fucking possible so that you have less overall energy to control."

Uryuu stood at the doorway of the room looking at Naruto strangely until he finished his rant, allowing him to speak, "Um… Yoruichi is waiting at the surface on you two to get up there."

Naruto grabbed Ichigo by his collar and dragged him up there, "This is going to have to do for now I guess… Come on kid, let's roll."

XxX

"Hey, where's Ganju?" Ichigo asked as he saw everyone up around the fireworks launcher except him.

"Wait!" Ganju yelled before turning a corner around the house, "The heroes always arrive a little bit later." He said with a thumbs up.

Kuukaku shook her head while Naruto frowned, "You totally butchered that quote and that gesture from the book I just released up here. Icha-Icha Kaihousha (Liberator). The mighty hero rushes in to assist his allies right before their inevitable deaths before the big climaxing fight scene on the bridge and says that exact quote. Chapter 16, page 211. It's supposed to go, 'The hero always arrives at the very last second.'" He then noticed Kuukaku and Ganju both giving him awed looks.

"You wrote that?" They both shouted in disbelief and wonder, "You're _that_ Naruto? Uzumaki Naruto?"

Naruto grinned, "Yep. I was broke so I decided to re-release my first volume of my own Icha-Icha works up here… It totally spread like a brush fire. I'm the best writer alive or dead. Literally."

"How long were you here before we showed up?" Yoruichi shouted at Naruto, finally having had enough of not knowing, however she was ignored as Naruto signed copies of his book that Kuukaku and Ganju somehow immediately produced.

Ichigo got everyone's attention, "What are you dressed up looking ready to fight for? Aren't you just here to bid us farewell?"

Ganju got in Ichigo's face and grabbed his collar, "My brother was killed by a Shinigami in cold blood."

Kuukaku's mood at meeting Naruto vanished when Ganju started speaking, "Ganju shut up! Don't-!"

"Don't interrupt me sis, just listen!" Ganju's tone actually shocked her into silence allowing him to continue, "My brother was a genius. He passed the Shinigami entrance exam on his first try, his energy was on par with a lieutenant of the 13th division. He finished the academy curriculum of six years in just two, and five years after that he became a lieutenant himself. But then he was betrayed and killed by his Shinigami partner!"

Ichigo stayed silent and let him continue, "I was young and didn't know everything about it, but I will always remember two things. The cold eyes of the Shinigami that brought my brother's body back, and the smiling face I saw when my brother thanked that Shinigami. I never understood why, but not once did my brother ever speak out in hatred against the Shinigami. I want to know the reason why he never hated them, why he believed in them even in death." He jerked Ichigo's collar, "You aren't the same as other Shinigami. If I go with you I'll know I'll find out why, so I'll be lending a hand on this one and I'll see with my own eyes what Shinigami are like!"

Kuukaku stared at her brother in disbelief as no one had anything to say to Ganju, "Well I guess you've made up your mind. Just don't run away mid-fight you brat! If you're serious about this give it everything you've got!"

Ganju nodded in determination until Ichigo broke his grip and grabbed his collar in return, "Watch my back."

Ganju smirked, "Scum. Alright let's do this." He said, breaking Ichigo's grip and walking towards the launcher.

Ichigo looked down at Yoruichi and held out the orb in his hand, "We all trained really hard to learn how to do this, as if our lives depended on it-."

"I didn't!" Naruto supplied helpfully.

"That was just you." Uryuu added.

Ichigo continued speaking to Yoruichi, slightly perturbed at the others, "-Anyway… Yoruichi can you do it?"

"You don't have to worry about that Just put it on the ground." Yoruichi said, hopping on it once Ichigo did so, right before forming a perfect cannonball effortlessly, "This is just as natural as breathing for me." Yoruichi let the barrier fall and noticed Ichigo pouting dejectedly, "Are you disappointed Do you feel even _more_ inferior? You had to train all night and I could do it without barely even thinking about it."

"Stop picking on the kid Yoruichi." Naruto said, picking up the orb and tossing it in his hand, "Let's get going already before day fully breaks. I would like to get my bearings of the place in the dark where it's harder to see me."

Kuukaku opened a path into the launcher, "Okay, everyone inside! It's time to begin." Everyone filed in, but Naruto was stopped by Kuukaku, "Not you."

Naruto blinked at her in confusion, "Yes? Can I help you? Please say yes, and please have it be something fun." Kuukaku held her hand out expectantly, "You know I can't do that. It would be favoritism." Her face didn't change expression, "It's not even supposed to be out this year! I'm supposed to wait until like next year before I start releasing more to build up a demand! Don't you know anything about economics?"

Kuukaku grinned at him, "Well if you don't want to I guess you can find another way into the Seireitei."

Naruto gave her a deadpan look and pulled a book from the inside of his jacket, "Everybody I owe favors to like this gets one. This is your one. I don't want to hear anything later when I release more books because this was your freebie."

Kuukaku snatched it away from him happily and moved aside, "Come and see me when you're done in there if you survive and we'll see if I can't change that tune." She said sultrily before turning more serious, "Take care of my kid brother."

Naruto stepped inside and gave her a salute, "Oi, who do you think you're talking to here? Everyone's coming back and that's the promise of a lifetime." He started posing grandly, "Because I am the-!" Kuukaku cut him off by closing the launcher, "Oh come on! I've got to get to say it at least once!"

Once everyone was inside around the orb, Yoruichi briefed them, "Once we get inside don't wander off by yourselves. If you encounter a captain-class enemy, run! Our objective is to capture Rukia, take no unnecessary risks."

Naruto shook his head, "If I'm caught I'm not running. My objective is to keep you all on your objective, and that means I'm going to be playing decoy!" He replied gleefully, "They're going to be running around like roaches in there, and in the middle of something like this nothing makes it easier for a small group of people to move about inside of a stronghold than misdirection, complete mayhem, and anarchy, hence, that will be _my_ job!"

Yoruichi looked at Naruto chidingly, "Listen Naruto, once we get there you-." She heard Kuukaku begin her incantation outside, "Damn it, it's begun! Focus your energy!"

XxX

(Seireitei)

"We didn't find anything Zaraki-taichou!" A Shinigami reported.

"Damn it!" A rather large man with scars all along his body, an eyepatch on his face, and his hair tied up in a unique spiky style with bells at the ends shouted, a little girl with pink hair on his back, "We searched all damn night and nothing!" He looked up at the sky once a loud noise echoed out, "Wait… what's that?" It then broke apart in the sky, "Damn! It separated! Now which one is the strongest?"

XxX

"Aizen-taichou, it hit the barrier and stopped!" A Shinigami shouted in shock.

A man with brown hair and glasses looked up in surprise, "It hit the barrier and didn't vanish. That means that the concentration of power is extremely high." The cannonball in the sky then burst into four different directions, "And so it begins."

XxX

(With Naruto)

"It landed over here! You can see the smoke and everything!" A Shinigami amid a group of them shouted as they made their way towards where Naruto crash landed. They ran in abruptly, each with a Zanpakutou all drawn, "Find the Ryoka!"

"He's not here!" The smoke cleared to reveal nothing but the amassed group of Shinigami, "Wait, I felt something run past me in the cloud of smoke!" A blonde Shinigami with spiky hair said as he pointed, "It went that way!" He yelled, grabbing a hold of his Zanpakutou in its sheath as he prepared to run.

"That way?"

"Get him! Don't let the intruder escape!"

The blonde Shinigami was quickly passed by all of the others as he allowed himself to lag behind until they were out of sight. Once they were gone he smirked to himself, "Suckers… kai!" In a puff of smoke, the Shinigami was gone, in his place was Naruto, and the Zanpakutou that was around his waist transformed into Yoruichi gripping tightly to the waist of his clothing, "And that's how you do that. And you were all like, 'Get ready to fight when we land!' Work smarter Yoruichi-chan, not harder."

Yoruichi detached herself from Naruto's hip and dropped onto the ground, "Well it looks like going by myself wouldn't have been a better strategy after all. So what's your plan to divert attention?"

Naruto grinned at her, "Well I'm sure that the most that Ichigo and the others are going to do will be to head towards wherever Rukia is, maybe fight a little bit, but not anything more than that. I need to keep as far away from there as possible and stir up interest elsewhere. Where would Rukia be so that I know where not to go?"

"The center of the Seireitei. She will be in the Senzaikyu (Palace of Remorseful Sin) where they hold prisoners to be executed soon." Yoruichi said, "We should get out of the open."

"Well then I need to find a place to begin running amok." Naruto replied positively, "Any ideas?"

Yoruichi gave him a huge grin, "Actually I do. How much trouble do you feel like risking getting in?"

Naruto returned her grin, "You have absolutely no idea who you're dealing with do you? I'm a patron deity for mischief and debauchery in the realm of the living! Just point me in a direction and give me some instruction. As a matter of fact, Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)!" Fifty Naruto replicas appeared in a puff of smoke, "Go find out where stuff is, go do stuff to it, and don't get caught!"

"And stay away from the 2nd Division Barracks when you find out where it is!" Yoruichi shouted at the clones before they could go off and do their own thing, "I want to hit that place on my own!" The clones all saluted Yoruichi and the original Naruto before going off in their own random directions, "Are you sure you should have given them such vague instructions?"

Naruto shrugged and jumped onto a nearby high wall, "Who cares? I mean, even if they get caught they can just dispel and that will be that. The less detailed the instructions the more chaotic this whole thing will be. Now let's go have some fun while the others struggle for their lives! Lead the way Yoruichi-chan!" Yoruichi pointed in the direction she wanted him to go off in and held on as he proceeded to disappear in a Shunshin.

XxX

(A Few Hours Later)

Yoruichi was on Naruto's shoulder as he quietly traversed the outside grounds of a particular set of barracks, "Are you sure you're up for this? I can get in on my own and do this. I used to run this place and could do it on my own."

Naruto looked at the cat and back to the place he was sneaking around, "Do you really want to transform just to set up pranks and run around naked when I could do it for you?"

"I have clothes." Yoruichi huffed indignantly, "And this division is directly connected to the Onmitsukidou (Stealth Force) especially tailored with stealth skills that the others don't possess in order to complete specialized missions. Guard duty of high profile prisoners, assassinations, things like that."

"So you're saying that they're more or less the ninja force of the Seireitei?" Naruto ventured as a guess.

Yoruichi nodded, "Yes, you could say that for more than a good number of them." She noticed a gleam in Naruto's eyes that he couldn't hide, "What do you plan on doing?"

Naruto let out a quiet laugh, "I can't remember the last time I had to go toe-to-toe with a ninja of any kind. You definitely can't talk me out of this now Yoruichi-chan, I'm in this for sure."

Feeling the impulse to scratch Naruto's face rising inside of her for being stupid again, Yoruichi decided to question his sanity, "What do you think you can do against an entire squadron of them?"

Naruto's mirth never faded, "When I was twelve I painted the entire mountainside monument of the most powerful village of ninja in the entire world in broad daylight wearing bright orange and I got away with it. And I wouldn't even consider my old self gum on my current self's shoe back then."

Yoruichi stared at him in silence for a moment, "Do you think you could do something like that again?"

Naruto grinned at her and scratched her behind the ears, "Oh I'm probably all over that as we speak."

XxX

(With Naruto's Clones – Outside 1st Division Headquarters)

As he stood on a high wall overlooking the area, a lone tear came to the eye of one of Naruto's Kage Bunshin as he stared up at a perfectly pristine white building with only the division insignia on any wall whatsoever, "It's so beautiful… It's absolutely perfect. It's so perfect-." The several clones alongside him all unsealed buckets of paint and brushes, "-And we are going to absolutely fuck this place up."

One of the other clones came up to the leader clone, "So how are we going to handle this fukutaichou? We can either do it the long and hard way. Artistic, but we might get stopped halfway through. Then again there's the fast way. It might not be as cool as the other way, but the chances of collateral damage are incredibly good and high, which would be hilarious and would definitely piss people off. "

The clone stroked its chin, "Well we're supposed to be doing this quickly, so do it the fast way! It should still be good. So go ahead and sneak into position." The clones saluted him and picked up their equipment before taking off around the area.

XxX

(9th Division Headquarters – Editing Department of the Seireitei Communication Magazine)

"Oh man…" A clone sitting at a desk, typing rapidly said with a grin on his face, "Who the hell runs this place? We might as well have walked right in through the front door for all the defenses this place had."

Another clone stood off to the side, taking pictures of another clone who stood in front of a white screen, "Well they think that there are only a few of us. They don't know that boss can make an entire army of us if he wanted to. Now keep writing our profile page. We're letting the whole Sereitei know who we are with a special issue of their magazine."

"They're all out chasing Ichigo and the others." A clone that was reading over another's work said, "They're going to try and cut them off and trap them with numbers since they have a general idea of where they are. And that is nowhere near here. Hopefully when we're done here we can divert some of the heat off of them… in a full, glossy, 42 page spread chronicling the greatness of Uzumaki Naruto." He handed the work back to another clone, "Go over it and add more flashy adjectives and titles to describe us."

"Fukutaichou what do we call the issue of the magazine?"

The leader clone grinned, "Special Issue: The Introduction of Uzumaki Naruto. The Immortal Sage Cometh!"

XxX

(Kuchiki Family Manor)

A Naruto clone stood in the middle of a serene garden sitting by a koi pond with his eyes closed and a smile on his face. He let out a deep sigh, "I like this garden, it's peaceful…" A clone came up to the leader clone, "Yes?"

"Fukutaichou, our brothers are in position in the laundry room with the orange dye and they found the Byakuya guy's room. Orders?" The clone asked.

The leader clone put out his hand with a thumbs-down, "Do it. I can smell the noble just wafting off of this place."

XxX

(With Naruto and Yoruichi – 2nd Division Headquarters)

Naruto quietly slipped inside of an office with his shoes off and Yoruichi on his shoulder before silently shutting the door, "This place has heated floors and automatic doors! Who the fuck paid for all of this?" Naruto whispered to Yoruichi in amazement, "I kind of don't want to mess this place up."

Yoruichi hopped off of Naruto's shoulder and started walking around the office, "Did you see that hot spring too? This place sure has been renovated since I was here." She hopped into a chair at a desk, "My little Soi-Fon has done so well since I left."

"Soi-Fon?" Naruto said as he walked through the room over to Yoruichi, "Who's that?"

Yoruichi smirked at Naruto, "Well she's my old bodyguard… protégé… etc. She's also the captain of this squad, she should be almost as fast as me seeing as how I trained her."

"So she's faster than me too?" Yoruichi nodded, getting Naruto to look dejected, "Well at least I'm still the fastest man _alive_… You Shinigami are making me have to step it up. I used to think I was bulletproof." He made it over to the desk, "Oh well. I'm still immortal, I have all the time in the world to get faster. So what are we here for? How are we pranking her?"

Yoruichi's eyes took on a saddened tint, "I don't want to prank her. I feel terrible for leaving her behind when I left the Soul Society 100 years ago, but I knew she would be just fine without me. Kisuke needed my help."

Naruto rubbed her back consolingly, "She'd understand wouldn't she?"

Yoruichi shook her head, "I'm all she had. Her entire world was based around me."

"I'm sorry Yoruichi." Naruto said, taking a seat on the desk, letting the cat hop into his lap, "I know something that will cheer you up though." A grin slowly formed on his face, "We could have sex on your old subordinate's desk, huh? Would you like that? Having sex on your underling's desk?" Yoruichi slashed him across the face with her claws, "Gah! So angry! Why does that hurt so bad?"

Yoruichi walked over to the window of the office and jumped on the sill, "You're a total pervert." She sighed when she heard him say 'So?', "And you haven't earned the privilege yet." She heard quiet, rapid footsteps from down the hall, "Naruto get up, we have to go!"

"Gah! What do you have on your claws? That shouldn't hurt this much!"

"…Okay…" Yoruichi said, "Good luck Naruto. If you don't die or wind up captured come and find me okay? I can't be discovered yet." She said before jumping out of the window.

The door to Soi-Fon's office burst in as a bunch Shinigami dressed in traditional ninja outfits rushed inside. Naruto stopped staggering around the room and fretting over the deep scratches on his face and noticed them creeping towards him slowly in Hakuda stances.

Naruto blinked and looked at the window where Yoruichi was no longer present, 'Oh Yoruichi you suck so hard, I am going to kick your cute little ass when I find you again… after I get out of this.' He gave a bright grin, "Hello everybody. I know it doesn't look like it but I'm a ninja too. So there's no need for us to fight, right?" When they didn't stop moving his smile dropped and a cold façade found its way to his face, "Didn't think that would work."

As the group attacked, Naruto dodged their first move and escaped to the hallway where after running for a short while he turned around to face them. Just as he had expected, he managed to get them coming at him in a single file line. Naruto clapped his hands together and held them before opening his mouth, "Fuuton: Daitoppa (Wind Release: Great Breakthrough)!" Naruto released a powerful wind that blew through the hall, sending the attackers flying backwards against the far wall.

Naruto continued to run away, 'No need for me to get into an open fight with these guys.' However he didn't have an option in the matter when he found himself dodging the swipe of a Zanpakutou from a Shinigami from an open doorway. A second swipe was blocked by a kunai that Naruto neatly deposited into his hand from his sleeve, 'Well I am inside of their HQ…'

Naruto used his free hand to grab the Shinigami by the throat and push him against the wall where he let go and punched him in the face three times hard enough to smash his head into the wall and crack it, knocking him out. Naruto turned around to find that he was still being pursued by even more of the Onmitsukidou, "To hell with this." Naruto formed an orb of energy in his palm and jumped up towards the ceiling, "Rasengan (Spiraling Sphere)!" Naruto smashed through towards the outside where he began running on the rooftop.

"The Ryoka has escaped! Don't let him out of the division grounds!"

A series of Shinigami appeared in front of and behind Naruto using Shunpo with their blades drawn, surrounding him. Naruto shut his eyes and reopened them, revealing the Rinnegan, "You guys are slooooow!" He said, provoking them to attack, "Shinra Tensei (Heavenly Subjugation of the Omnipresent God)!" An orb of gravitational force pushed away all of the attackers violently, sending them flying all about.

Naruto let the bodies drop all around him harmlessly and deactivated his Rinnegan before rubbing his eyes harshly, "Ugh… still hurts." He said before disappearing in a burst of speed.

XxX

Soi-Fon, a petite woman short black hair with two long braids down her back ending in golden rings. She had a common Shinigami's uniform on as well as a captain's haori and had a stern look on her face. Her lieutenant, a plump man twice her height and four times her size who had black hair in an noble looking hairstyle, walked next to her. The two wandered through the HQ as panic was evident with all of the other Shinigami scrambling about.

Soi-Fon looked around, "Omaeda, what's going on here?"

"I don't know taichou…" He said before singling out a Shinigami, "What's happened here?"

He stopped and saluted Soi-Fon and Omaeda, "Taichou, fukutaichou, one of the Ryoka came here and defeated a number of our troops. He had blonde hair, a red jacket and fought very well using Hakuda and a strange kind of Kidou."

"Casualties?" Soi-Fon said wanting to get all of the information she could.

"We have around 43 injured… none dead. He simply defeated his attackers and left."

Soi-Fon narrowed her eyes and turned to leave the base, Omaeda following behind, "Taichou what are we going to do now?" He asked.

"You will stay here and mobilize our forces to begin properly searching for the offending Ryoka. I will be hunting for this particular one." She said, as Omaeda stopped to follow through with her orders, "I will not let this humiliation of both the 2nd squad and the Onmitsukidou stand." She said, holding back her anger behind a mask of coldness.

* * *

Omake: Naruto Alone in the Rukongai (Day 1 of 46)

Naruto picked himself up off of the ground and dusted himself off, "What the hell exploded in that tunnel?" He asked, getting no response. He looked around, "Oi! Yoruichi! Ichigo! Mister Specs! Big Chad! Cute Bubbly Girl! Where the hell are you guys?" He looked around once more, scratching his head, "Damn… did we get split up? I could have sworn they were right behind me."

"Well look at what we have here boys…"

Naruto turned around to see a group of thugs smirking at him and walking his way, "He looks like a new soul… and a pretty boy at that."

"Those clothes sure look expensive." Another man said, "Why don't you hand them over?"

Naruto gave them a dry look, "I would, but I don't think you want to lose your girlfriend over what I've got going on underneath. Now if you could help me out, where the hell am I?"

A series of laughs went up, "Unfortunately for you new guy, you're in the worst damn place in East Rukongai. District 80: Jigokudari (Hell's Row). Now if you give me everything including the clothes on your back I'll let you live and maybe let you into my gang as one of my foot soldiers."

Naruto stroked his chin in faux thought before pointing at the man, "Or instead of that… how about I give you nothing and you tell me what I want to know about this place so that I can move around. Now I know it sounds like the raw end of the deal, but hear me out. You can try to get the results of your offer, but that won't end well for you and I'm still going to get everything out of my offer, you'll just be in a lot more pain afterwards. Savvy?"

"Get him! Skin that punk alive!"

Naruto let out a sigh and cracked his knuckles as the men started walking towards him, drawing their weapons, "Your choice."

XxX

(Three Minutes Later)

Amid a hodgepodge of beaten up bodies, some groaning in pain, and most others unconscious, Naruto was crouched down over a stick drawing in the dirt that signified a rough map of the Soul Society, "I see… So this is the worst district and in order to get to a gate, no matter what direction I go in, I still have to go through 79 more, each like a town with borders and limits… That's going to be a long run."

The man that had initiated the attack against him was on the ground with multiple bumps and bruises on his face as well as his arm held behind his back in a most painful manner, "Yeah, yeah! For most people that walk would take a month."

"A month?" Naruto cried with anime tears going down his face, "You've got to be kidding me! Where are the others that came with me? This sucks!" He abruptly stopped and stood up, "Well then I guess I'll just have to get to a gate and wait for them… it's all I can do, because if what you're saying is true, this place is fucking huge."

"I'm telling you the truth I swear!" The man pleaded, "Just let me go. Please!"

Naruto stared at him for a second before letting go of his arm and getting up, "Get out of here, and watch who you pick fights with. You never know who might be the strongest person around." The man nodded rapidly and turned to run before Naruto's voice stopped him again, "Hey! You ever heard of any people from a place called Konohagakure no Sato? It's a place in the world of the living."

"N-No!" The man shook his head in fear of Naruto, "Are you going to kill me for not knowing?"

Naruto again shook his head and gestured for him to shoo. The man did so without a second thought. Naruto turned towards the west and started stretching, "Okay… I wonder how fast anyone has ever tried going to get there. I guess I'll find out for myself. Maybe if Yoruichi ended up this far away too I can beat her there if she's still a cat." He bounced on his toes a few times before taking off in a dead sprint down the street, kicking up wind and disappearing in a blur before anyone could see him.

* * *

**Okay peeps, business first. I keep hearing the same thing over and over again so instead of saying it repeatedly I might as well address it in one bulk fashion. Vizard is the English adaptation of the name, Visored is the original spelling of the name as is in the original manga which is my original tool of reference. They're both pronounced the same so it shouldn't matter and I feel more comfortable writing it that way.**

**Another thing about me not making Naruto super. Again, it is logic based. He's not a pushover in the least due to the fact that he is totally skilled, experienced, and powerful over the course of countless years. However the Shinigami will also have a ridiculous amount of battle experience, as well as the fact that they will be constantly tested due to the active nature of their work and in practice, unlike Naruto who only had himself to stand and train against for the longest time. And the power-scale has always seemed to go Bleach Naruto to me, since the people that have the power to reap the soul of even the world's strongest mortal will stand over previously mentioned mortal… especially since said mortal 999,999 times out of 1,000,000 won't be able to see them. But Naruto's not normal. *laughs* Not even close.**

**While he has the power to match any captain out there, he's also dealing with something he has little knowledge of, the world of spirits in general which until the start of this story he thought only existed as ghosts for at least 100 years, jumping into it on a week's notice as is his nature. For every jutsu he knows it's not like they don't have anything to match it. The Zanpakutou abilities and all of the Kidou. So he actually **_**is**_** super… but he's fighting **_**Death Gods**_** as a **_**human**_**… calm down.**

**Alright, your boy has to sleep for class tomorrow and a TI-84 calculator to find, so later. Kenchi out… I wonder if I can get one for the cheap on …**


	5. Wrong Way Tactics

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. I'm working on my long range mind control powers in an effort to change this fact. Come on Kishimoto, Kube, are either of you feeling the urge to give your franchises to a fledgling MMA fighter/black guy in college? Well… just makes sure it's the right one when you do or I'm going to be pissed!

**Chapter 5: Wrong Way Tactics**

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(1st Division Headquarters)

Yamamoto Genryuusai Shigekuni, the captain-commander of all Shinigami in the Gotei 13 was not having a good day. Communications between the squads out searching for the intruders running rampant in the Seireitei were few and far between. The small numbers that made the invading group up made it very difficult to pin them down and capture them, thus there were long periods of time in between any correspondence about them. Besides that, the squads that were defeated would have very little to say on the matter once they were found.

The good news out of this was that thus far no one had been killed in the fighting. So far the only casualties were a few beaten up Shinigami including some of the higher-ups including 4th seat of the 7th Division Ikkanzaka Jiroubou (a loss that resulted in the loss of his Shinigami powers), Ayasegawa Yumichika, the 5th seat of the 11th Division, and Madarame Ikkaku, the 3rd seat of the 11th Division. There was also a hostage taken, 7th seat of the 4th Division Yamada Hanatarou.

The sun was going down and the Ryoka had yet to be cornered and defeated. And now there were screams and the sounds of loud splashes ringing out all over the HQ that he had gotten sick of hearing. What was going on in his Seireitei? First all of the happenings with Gin, then these Ryoka proceed to run circles around his Shinigami. At this rate he would have to show himself and proceed to show the all just how an old-school expulsion was supposed to be done.

His thoughts were cut short when a loud splash diverted his attention to his balcony overseeing the 1st Division's area where a large smattering of multicolored paint stained the ground, 'What in the-?'

XxX

A Naruto clone looked up at the formerly pristine white HQ of the 1st Division. What was once a pure, white, clean wall was now looked as if a giant got drunk, drank gallons and gallons of paint, and proceeded to projectile vomit all over the sides of the building. And the poor, poor Shinigami that were outside hanging around when the barrage happened… well it was funny to him, and probably to the other clones too, but he was certain that they were pissed.

"Should I?" He asked himself before looking down at the paint cans still surrounding his feet, "Well I have more chakra than the rest and this _is _my job so I guess I should dispel doing what I was made to do." He started looking around before picking up two cans, "# 24: Sail Blue. Always a classic." He threw the open cans of paint at the building and made hand-seals, "Fuuton: Kazegafukiha (Wind Release: Powerful Wind Wave)!"

The clone shot a focused spiral blade of wind from its mouth that hit the cans in the air, cutting them open and spreading the paint around sparsely with the backdraft from the jutsu. The clone nodded in satisfaction when the sight of the blue paint hitting the building filled its vision. It took a deep breath, "Okay, that's a lot of shots with that jutsu. I think I'm just about done."

"And what do you think you're doing?"

The clone turned around to face an old man. He was bald with scars on his head and a grey goatee and had an unassuming look about him as he stood with a cane, but he also wore a captain's haori so that meant that age or not, this old guy wasn't a slouch. And he was a clone of his original, picking a fight with a captain would serve absolutely no point except making things worse for Naruto and everyone else that had entered with him.

The clone grinned at him sheepishly, "I just thought this place could use a little touch up. It's pretty white and dreary isn't it?" Yamamoto gave no inflection of anger or anything, he just kept staring at the clone who decided to break the silence, "Well allow me to introduce myself. I am Uzumaki Naruto, nice to meet you."

"Yamamoto Genryuusai Shigekuni." The elderly captain said, being courteous to the Naruto-clone, "Captain-commander of the Gotei 13 and leader of the Shinigami forces."

Naruto-clone extended his hand, "No kidding? I didn't think I'd meet the guy that ran this place. You've got a nice set up, but your towns outside the walls are kind of under budget, don't you think?" He said, commenting on the Rukongai.

Yamamoto didn't rise to the attempt at small-talk, "Why are you here? What do you and the other intruders hope to accomplish?"

"I can't really tell you what the others are here for, that's their business." The clone replied off-handedly, picking at its ear. Why should it have been scared of anything? All that could have happened would have been Yamamoto dispelling it, and it was about to do that to itself anyway, "I'd tell you why I'm here, but I don't even know that myself."

"Would you simply surrender?" The old man asked the rather youthful looking prankster, "This can be resolved without the need for violence."

The clone gave him a deadpan look, "If we surrender you either imprison us for life or straight out execute us so we're not going to do that. And besides, it wouldn't matter if I did that anyway, I'm not even the original. Later Yamamoto-jiji!" The clone said before disappearing in a puff of smoke, confusing the captain.

Yamamoto watched the smoke from the clone disperse and then panned his eyes up at the HQ. Were the attacker really there to cause harm to the Seireitei he could have attempted an assassination attempt on him right then and there, or if nothing else at least destroyed the HQ itself… but all it did was paint the sides of the building and a few Shinigami. He didn't quite know what to make of this at the moment. He needed a second to evaluate the overall situation.

With that in mind he made his way back to his office. Now who was he going to get to clean all of this up?

XxX

(With Naruto – 2nd Division Grounds)

'Where did Yoruichi go?' He wondered to himself as he continued to flee from the area. It wasn't that he had trouble defeating the Shinigami that had attacked him there and he didn't feel he could win, no his head clone from the 1st Division HQ had dispelled, and along with giving him a humorous visual that gave him a good laugh, it had also shared his point of view on a certain subject.

He didn't want to come off as something that was truly dangerous because he wasn't trying to be. He wasn't here to overthrow the system, kill anyone, or anything like that, he was just bait. Something meant to divert attention away from Ichigo, Chad, Uryuu, Orihime, Ganju, and to a lesser extent Yoruichi (though her leaving him high and dry like that wasn't cool at all). He was supposed to get all of the attention while they slipped past, keeping their fighting to an absolute minimum. If Naruto was perceived as dangerous and a threat all of the others would be perceived as dangerous and a threat, and that would take the situation to a whole new level of risk.

The plan was obviously to remain unassuming for the most part. As long as he was thought to be a mild nuisance, the Shinigami would think the same of Ichigo and the others, as long as they all didn't do something stupid like willingly get into a fight with someone at a significantly high level.

XxX

"Achoo!" Ichigo sneezed loudly before lifting his Zanpakutou to block a strike from a long, segmented sword, 'Great, I've got to beat this Abarai Renji guy again and now I've got a cold. How many attacks was that again?' Ichigo asked himself before the sword that had attacked him snaked around his defense and cut his shoulder, "Gah!"

The man Renji, holding the sword, had tattoos all over his body, red hair put up in a pineapple looking ponytail, and a white headband along with the usual Shinigami outfit, "You're still weak! Coming here for Rukia was a mistake, you should have just cut your losses and escaped with your life!"

Ichigo pulled himself up using Zangetsu for support, "I don't care what you say, or how strong any of you Shinigami are, I'm going to beat all of you and rescue Rukia!" He said before rushing at Renji.

XxX

'What are the chances that someone like that will even find them?' Naruto thought to himself as he found himself running through a wooded area of the 2nd Division grounds. It felt like home for him so he gladly took to moving along the forested area. The land of his origin was filled with lush forests and Naruto had always had a like for nature and places like this as he felt more at home there.

Jumping through the trees, he never really sensed the quick motion of a Shinigami using Shunpo coming up from his blindspot, only noticing when a hard punch ricocheted off the side of his face and sent him crashing into a tree, felling it with the force he hit it. Naruto picked himself up angrily, "Alright, who's the dead man who did that?" He was not amused. Someone had actually gotten the drop on him and he really didn't want to leave this person in one piece to tell the tale. He formed a cross hand-seal and in a puff of smoke was surrounded in a circle by a dozen clones, "Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)! Keep your eyes open!" Naruto shouted to his clones as his attacker wasn't in sight.

After a short moment, the clones were all destroyed swiftly by a blur, revealing that Naruto wasn't among the circle of clones.

Back a short distance away from where the attack took place, Soi-Fon took cover behind a tree, "So that wasn't a simple speed technique… they were all real. I wondered why they weren't moving."

"Fuuton: Senpuuken (Wind Release: Whirlwind Fist)!"

Soi-Fon ducked from behind the cover of her tree as a blast of wind came from in front of her and hit it, leaving multiple tiny gashes in the bark. As she lifted her eyes after dodging she let out a gasp as a fist came into her view. She grabbed the arm throwing the punch and jerked it to throw the attacker off-balance, throwing him towards the trees where the man recovered in mid-air and jumped up the sides of a series of trees before coming to a stop on a branch.

Naruto gave the woman below a look, sizing her up before speaking, "You fight like a ninja, just better than those other guys from the HQ I was stuck inside of. That haori also means you're a captain so I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you're Soi-Fon?"

Soi-Fon narrowed her eyes at Naruto, "And you're the Ryoka that assaulted my headquarters so brazenly. I assume you have a death wish… picking a fight with the Onmitsukido the way you have."

Naruto shrugged, "No, extenuating circumstances caused me to get discovered while I was there. I was just sightseeing." He gave her a grin, "I've never been to the Seireitei before, could you give me a tour? I'd appreciate it."

Soi-Fon lowered herself into a fighting stance, "Certainly. I'll give you a lovely tour of our holding cells for prisoners."

"As fun as that sounds I think I'll pass." Naruto said, priming his muscles to get ready to move, "Mostly because I don't think you'll be there to keep me company if I decide to go. Goodbye pretty lady, it was nice meeting you." His body then seemed to vanish in an afterimage.

Seeing him simply vanish like that brought a wide-eyed look from Soi-Fon, "Shunpo? How does a Ryoka that isn't even a Shinigami know that technique?" She said to herself before determinedly deciding to hunt him down and beat the answers out of him herself, before she was remotely contacted, "What? A meeting now?" She looked at where she could still sense Naruto's decently hidden but still distinct Reiryoku, "We'll finish this soon Ryoka." She said before vanishing towards the meeting place of the captains.

XxX

(1st Division Headquarters – Captains' Assembly Hall)

Yamamoto stood in front of the other captains of the Seireitei. It was a good thing that none of them, even Ichimaru Gin, had chosen to comment of the disheveled state of the 1st Division HQ because as far as he was concerned at the moment there was nothing funny about the situation, "Right now on the first day of this emergency the 13 divisions are already short one lieutenant. Now is not the time to allow the lower-ranked Shinigami to handle this mission, nor will I question Ichimaru any longer for acting alone earlier."

Gin's ever present grin showed through, "Well thanks!"

Yamamoto ignored his rather eccentric captain and continued, "As of now, all higher-ranked officials including lieutenants must have their Zanpakutou with them at all times, you are now allowed to fight at full power. Please inform those that could not be here for the meeting. Everyone we are about to begin an all-out war. Dismissed."

Hearing that Yamamoto had dismissed them all, Soi-Fon proceeded to hurry away back to her squad's HQ to relay the message to her lieutenant before leaving again. She had a Ryoka to hunt down.

XxX

(Hours Later- With Naruto)

Naruto was most decidedly lost. He was certain that he had passed over into a new division's grounds because he had cleared a large wall, but he was still in a forest. Still, he had not the faintest idea where he was. He was going off of the sight of the center tower of the Seireitei, the place he knew he had to keep away from, but he couldn't do that if he didn't even know where he was. And running away from Soi-Fon had lost him his sense of direction. The sun had fallen by now as the moon hung in the sky, unable to be seen from underneath the canopy of the woods.

'I can't stop yet.' He said to himself, 'I need to find some of the others and make sure they're alright, but this place is so large. My clones never even saw them before they dispelled. Oh well, I'm still busy at the moment anyway.' Naruto stopped running for a moment and leaned against a tree while standing on a branch, "Just like old times… running from an invisible enemy in the woods. She's good, she left and then came back and found me again. So this is a Shinigami captain?"

Naruto sighed to himself and suddenly dropped from the branch he was standing on to evade Soi-Fon, who appeared behind him and threw a kick hard enough to crack the top half of the tree she kicked. While falling, Naruto reached into his coat and pulled out an unsealed fuuma shuriken that he extended and hurled at Soi-Fon while channeling wind chakra to it. Soi-Fon jumped down after him and dodged the weapon, allowing it to cut the very top of the tree off.

A grin of victory came to Soi-Fon's face as she disappeared using Shunpo and reappeared to deliver a heavy axe-kick to Naruto, however her grin dropped when her target disappeared in a puff of smoke and in his place was the top of the tree that he had recently cut off, 'What? I know I hit him this time.'

She landed on the ground and dodged another fuuma shuriken, the same one that had been initially thrown, prompting her to look up in the air where Naruto was coming down at her with a blue orb of spinning raw energy in his right hand, "Rasengan (Spiraling Sphere)!" Soi-Fon avoided it as it created a crater on the ground kicking up dust and debris. From the dust came a series of shuriken flying at her that she was able to duck under and around before proceeding to charge into the dust cloud using Shunpo.

Inside the cloud the two clashed with enough force to blow the rest of the dust away, throwing each other back, both landing on their feet, looking at each other warily. Soi-Fon, still on guard, commented on Naruto's ability, "You're no slowpoke Ryoka, and those traps you set all through the woods slowed me down. You fight very similar to the Onmitsukidou… who trained you?"

Naruto was in a ready stance, prepared for Soi-Fon to take any opening on him that she could find in their down time, "I wasn't trained by anyone in your Onmitsukidou. I'm not a Shinigami… I didn't even know there were more than one until a week ago. I've got to say… the Shinigami I know of doesn't look nearly as cute as you though." He said, trying to get under her skin for an advantage. It didn't hurt that he was being honest either.

"Flattery will get you killed in this battle." Soi-Fon said coldly, "You're very unlucky. The kid gloves are off now, Yamamoto-soutaichou has declared a state of war against you Ryoka not too long ago. How unfortunate for you."

"Why?" Naruto wondered. He hadn't done anything _that_ bad had he? He intentionally kept from maiming or killing his opponents and only stuck to petty large-scale vandalism, significant enough to cause problems, but not bad enough to put them in a state of war. What happened?

"Too many seated officers have been defeated. Even the lieutenant of the 6th division has fallen to you intruders." Soi-Fon responded. She would have attacked him by now, but even when expressing confusion he never lowered his guard, his body was ready to respond to any move she made. This was a true Hakuda master… but he claimed to not be a Shinigami so his hand-to-hand style was all his own, "The captains have been requested to enter the battle now, and soon you Ryoka will be exterminated."

Naruto shook his head, "It's only been a day. If I get taken down inside of this place it's going to take longer than a day to catch me and finish me off. I'm not losing here."

"You don't have a choice in the matter!" Soi-Fon shouted as she came at him again.

Naruto saw her begin to use Shunpo and made the boar hand-seal to prepare his own countermeasure, "Jinton: Mueishou (Swift Release: Shadowless Flight)!" Naruto felt his body charged up and felt the world slow down around him, signifying his initiated technique had taken hold.

Rapidly turning his head he saw Soi-Fon coming at him quickly, her body primed for another attack. This woman was no joke hand-to-hand. She was just as physically strong as him despite her petite frame and with the speed behind her attacks he saw her as a true threat, a full-scale fight and there was no holding back this time.

The first attack from Soi-Fon, Naruto moved to the side and let slide past him allowing him to rattle off a counter spin kick that Soi-Fon ducked under, rising back up to unleash a furious set of jabs at Naruto's face that he barely managed to block and dodge, 'She's so much smaller than me that she has to get in close in order to have a fighting chance of hitting anything, but when she does she's so fast I can barely block what she throws!'

Naruto wound up being tagged by one of Soi-Fon's punches that sent him reeling back. Naruto growled and got back into the fight, pushing more effort into moving his muscles faster and actually doing so, catching Soi-Fon off guard with a hard front kick that sent her flying through the forest.

She rolled along the ground and back to her feet, glaring Naruto down, "Faster than you let on huh? Well so am I!" She said before coming at him faster than before. She saw his eyes widen as she landed a hard strike to his face, however he burst into smoke and replaced himself with a log. Soi-Fon turned around, not trying to be caught with the same maneuver twice and kicked Naruto in the head, however he once again turned into a log.

This occurred four more times until Soifon found herself surrounded by half a dozen logs, glaring hatefully at the pieces of lumber until she heard a sizzling noise and noticed on a few of the logs a slip of paper burning down. Feeling something wrong she immediately made to vacate the area, forgetting that she had lost track of Naruto for a moment, and wound up paying for it.

The direction she turned towards to flee was filled with the sight of multiple Naruto clones that piled on Soi-Fon and held her in place as the tags on the logs finished burning down, finally engulfing the dog-pile in an explosion.

Naruto watched the explosion from a decent distance, standing atop a tall tree as the smoke from the explosion wafted up above the canopy, "No need to be so fancy… playground tactics can work just as well." He narrowed his eyes after a moment, "Except in this case they didn't…" He crouched down atop the tree and focused his eyes on the forest below, trying to scout any motion at all, "Come on Soi-Fon… get your pretty little ass out here. I know you're not done yet. Don't make me flush you out." He said more to himself than to Soi-Fon.

XxX

From nearby in cat form, Yoruichi was doing the same thing Naruto was doing, standing atop a tree, however she was watching the progress of Naruto's battle with Soi-Fon. She had been all over the Seireitei, keeping track of all of the others, and felt that today had been as good a first day as could have been hoped for with the circumstances, but here it could end on a sour note.

Naruto was for a lack of a better term her pinch hitter. He was the ace-in-the-hole in the event of a worst case scenario, but she wasn't sure how he would do in a battle against a captain, which was the purpose she actually needed him for. He carried himself like a man that had seen countless conflicts, but aside from her short spar with him she wasn't sure of what he could do. Well now was the time to find out, and she couldn't have picked a taller task for him to measure up with.

'Let's see what you're really capable of Naruto… and let's see how much Soi-Fon has grown in 100 years.'

XxX

(Naruto vs. Soi-Fon)

Naruto was sick of waiting atop the tree. He wasn't foolish enough to believe that Soi-Fon couldn't find him. She knew exactly where he was, she was just waiting for an opening to finish him in one move. Well he wasn't about to just sit there and let her take him down like that. Naruto seal-lessly formed five Kage Bunshin who dropped from the sky around him into the forest and began searching for Soi-Fon, 'Come on… I know you're there. Take the bait.' He said, shutting his eyes to focus on his strategy.

The second one of his Kage Bunshin was forcefully dispelled by Soi-Fon covertly he threw a kunai over in that general direction, getting the noise to alert his other Kage Bunshin who began to head over to corner her. The second another one was dispelled he did the same before forming more Kage Bunshin and sending them in. He was using them to triangulate Soi-Fon's location… and she had no clue.

Soi-Fon was busy staying hidden inside of the forest, moving ever closer towards Naruto quietly. Ever since escaping his massive explosion she had been slowly moving towards Naruto who had taken the high ground in order to find her and engage her once more. He was no rank amateur, the conflict thus far had clearly shown her this so she had to be careful and engage him on her terms. Then he started littering the surrounding area with those detestable clones of his. After killing one, no matter how quietly or stealthily she was able to do the deed, he would seem to be able to find her and would throw a weapon in her direction which would lead more clones to her. Whenever another one got close she would keep killing them before she would have to fight an entire army.

They simply kept coming and they were being so intentionally noisy they were exposing her to the original who was getting closer and closer to tagging her with those throwing knives. She would look through the canopy and swear for a moment his cold blue eyes were piercing right through her.

'I have had enough of this!' Soi-Fon thought to herself as the clones found her once again. She formed a burst of crackling yellow energy in her palm before drawing an inverted triangle in the air that formed points of energy at each corner that she fired at the original Naruto, "Bakudou #30: Shitotsu Sansen (Way of Binding #30: Beak-Piercing Triple Beam)!" The beam shot off and hit the original who saw it coming and tried to jump away, but the attack was too fast for him to escape as it caught him and threw him back looking for a surface to pin him to. But then the Naruto burst into smoke, just like one of his clones.

"You took your eyes off of the prize sweetheart!" Naruto roared as he dispelled the rest of his clones and rushed at her through the cover of smoke where he began pummeling her with fists that sent her stumbling back, shot after shot, "I'm the greatest ninja ever, you don't underestimate me! Shinigami captain or not! You keep one eye on me at all times or you pay for it! Now let's finish this!" Naruto formed four Kage Bunshin around Soi-Fon who stumbled into one that shoved her, allowing the others to close in and kick her into the air, "U! Zu! Ma! Ki!"

The original used Swift Release to deposit himself above the treetops where Soi-Fon was being kicked up to, somersaulting down to meet her in the air, "Uzumaki Naruto Rendan (Uzumaki Naruto Barrage)!"

Soi-Fon recovered in the air and maneuvered accordingly to counter Naruto's attempted heel drop with a rising kick that caused the two to clash in the sky.

Naruto sprung higher off of the clash of attacks and landed on top of another tree. Soi-Fon landed on an elevated branch, not much lower than his position.

'I seriously need to go home and buy each one of the Visoreds something special for whipping my ass back into fighting shape.' Naruto thought to himself as he found himself staring down Soi-Fon once again, trying not to get enchanted by the serious, yet beautiful face of the female Shinigami captain, "You're really good. That's one of my taijutsu finishes. To adjust yourself in the air like that shows incredible dexterity and flexibility."

Soi-Fon nodded in acknowledgement, "Same to you Ryoka. You're incredibly hard to pin down. I can see why the lower-level Shinigami had such trouble dealing with you. Only a lieutenant or a captain would be able to deal with you."

Naruto wanted to bow in a grandiose fashion in a flirting or teasing manner, but taking his eyes off of this woman would undoubtedly get him killed so he simply settled for a cheeky grin, "My name is Uzumaki Naruto. I'm telling you this so that you know the name of the face that will be filling your dreams the next time you go to sleep." He said, drawing a kunai that emerged from his sleeve, holding it in a reverse grip, "Why don't we end it here? I don't want to fight, and we seem to be at a stalemate."

Soi-Fon smirked, "Now that I'm assured of the fact that you're at the very least adequate I don't have to hold back anymore." She said, finally drawing her Zanpakutou, "I'm still not going as fast as I can, hopefully you can keep up but if you can't too bad." Her smirk turned to a sneer, "Jinteki Shakusetsu, Suzumebachi (Sting All Enemies to Death, Hornet)!" Soi-Fon's Zanpakutou transformed from a sword into gold and black gauntlet around her right wrist and forearm that had a small chain linking it to a stinger-like gold blade twice the length of her finger on her middle finger, "Feel honored to see my Shikai (Initial Release) to my Zanpakutou Uzumaki."

Naruto's face fell significantly in mood once he felt her significantly increased Reiatsu, "Oh hell… this just got way harder didn't it?" Soi-Fon's response was to vanish in a Shunpo again, "I thought so." Naruto then replaced himself with a log that was impaled by Soi-Fon's Shikai.

Naruto was back in the forest, running rapidly to put distance between himself and Soi-Fon, 'Kawarimi no Jutsu (Substitution Jutsu)… A ninja's best friend for thousands of years.' His developing skill at sensing Reiryoku came in handy as he felt Soi-Fon quickly closing the distance on him, "Goddamn she's even faster and stronger now, as if she needed it!" He said before immediately turning an about face to block a slash from Soi-Fon who didn't stick around long enough to attack again, choosing to try getting a better angle on him.

'Damn it Yoruichi why'd you make her so fast? Why aren't you down here fighting her?' He asked himself as he hit the deck to avoid another sneak attack from Soi-Fon, rolling over and tossing out a handful of shuriken that hit nothing but air, 'Shit!' He thought to himself before he found himself stomped hard into the ground by his enemy.

Soi-Fon watched Naruto forcefully release spittle out of his mouth from her stomp, "This is the end Uzumaki. You did well though." She poised Suzumebachi for a finishing strike on Naruto.

Naruto gritted out a response beneath her heel, "A real ninja is never done as long as his hands are free!" Naruto's free, weaponless hand produced a kunai from his sleeve that shot at Soi-Fon's head, forcing her off of him and giving Naruto a chance to recover back to his feet where he immediately lashed out with a slash from his remaining kunai. He missed wide as she effortlessly dodged, "Damn it, that's it! My gift from a bygone era, Rinnegan (Samsara Eye)!"

Soi-Fon's breath hitched slightly when she felt a significant shift in Naruto's power, 'What a release of Reiatsu! It's so high and refined! Who is this man? This Ryoka has a power on my level!' She looked over at Naruto who had a blue swirling wind surrounding his body, but the truly significant change was the pattern of his eyes. Formerly blue and full of emotion, they were now cold and emotionless.

Naruto's stare seemed to pierce into Soi-Fon's soul. Whether that was simply the effect of his Reiryoku or something more she couldn't tell, "I hate using this…" He said softly, "Its power is awesome but I hate using it. I understand what the predecessor of this said now… every time I activate these eyes my mind and heart are filled with the memories of the days I've lost and turning it off nearly drives me to tears each time." He pointed at his eyes, "These eyes are my memento of my loved ones lost." He then pulled at the bandanna around his neck with the leaf insignia, "And this is the inspiration that tells me to move along each day. To never forget them, to always remember, but to live the way they would have wanted me to." He closed his eyes for a moment, "But you don't care anything about this do you?"

'I understand…' Soi-Fon thought to herself, keeping up her game face, 'I understand just as you do what it's like to lose what you think is your entire world. But I must move along as well, for the day that I can be face-to-face with Yoruichi-sama again, to bring her to justice for her betrayal.' In a whip of air, Naruto vanished from in front of her, signifying that it was time to begin again, 'Faster…' She thought before doing so herself to meet him in combat.

All throughout the forest the only decisively visible trait there was of a battle going on were the sounds of the air whipping and snapping, and the cuts that would appear on a tree every few moments as they fought all over. Soi-Fon was utterly surprised at his stamina. The number of Shinigami who could move this fast and continue fighting at a high level without becoming winded in the least she could count on one hand.

Naruto on the other hand was currently kicking himself. The reason being, that he couldn't get a free opportunity to use Mokuton (Wood Release). He had enough time during his life to experiment with many of the elements he had at his disposal with the use of the Rinnegan, there were many kekkei genkai that he couldn't duplicate with the time he was given, but Mokuton was one he had managed to work out. It took a lot of focus for him to do anything using it though since he had to force it, it wasn't natural. If he took his focus off of Soi-Fon for a moment to attempt a Mokuton Jutsu that wouldn't serve much of a purpose due to them being in a forest already it might have been his last move.

She may have had faster feet than he had with her mastery over Shunpo, but Naruto could match her through a combination of Swift Release and the use of the Rinnegan to keep track of her Reiatsu trail when he couldn't keep a lock on her body itself. As long as he had that, he didn't need to really match her speed, he was fast enough to buy himself enough time to lift his kunai to block her Suzumebachi as he could guess where she would aim would be somewhere on his upper body.

They clashed blades and Naruto almost bit down on his tongue when Soi-Fon hit him with a cheap shot using her free hand. He hit her right back off of pure reflex and the two stopped once more, glaring at each other with blood running down both of their lips, "Why are you in the Seireitei? What do you hope to achieve?" Soi-Fon asked before wiping away the blood on her mouth.

Naruto shrugged, "I couldn't tell you. I'm just passing through as a favor to a friend. I didn't come to fight, just like I told you."

"Orders are to put you and the other Ryoka down no matter the cost on sight." Soi-Fon said, "Either by capturing you or killing you, it doesn't matter as long as you are brought down. You should never have come here Uzumaki." She said sternly.

Naruto smiled warmly at her, not taking any offense to her fighting him off of orders as it was actually a pretty good back and forth between them, "It's okay. You have to do what you have to do. No matter the outcome I forgive you my little bee."

Hearing him say that triggered something in Soi-Fon, something that Naruto could visibly see as her face twisted angrily before her attacks became more furious than ever. Instead of simply going for his vital points, if she couldn't hit him with her blade she would attack him otherwise with her lower body. When they would clash and her attack was blocked she would use her legs, kicking Naruto in the body and face, softening him up and beginning to pummel him much like he did to her earlier. It wasn't about the victory anymore at this point, 'No one may call me that! Only she ever called me that!' She thought as her attack continued.

Naruto was beginning to take a beating. Soi-Fon was seriously tenderizing him with her kicks, she seriously kicked hard, but as long as he wasn't getting stabbed he would take a few punches and kicks. He was a tough enough guy… right? 'Hey that was a lot of blood from a single punch.' Naruto thought to himself, 'Alright, I'm not her personal heavy-bag, If she kicks me or punches me again I'm going to make her see why that's a bad idea.'

Of course, Soi-Fon threw another punch when they got close together and clashed blades. Naruto in response, let go of the kunai he was using to block and tucked her blade arm under his armpit, getting a gasp of surprise out of her… and then he headbutted her in the face. A fight knows no gender barriers.

A bloody-nosed Soi-Fon replied with a quick shot of her knee to Naruto's groin and felt some satisfaction when she felt him tense up and recoil, despite the fact he didn't voice his pain. She drove another punch right into Naruto's belly and did so repeatedly, trying to get him to let go. And he did, just not in the way she had hoped he would.

Naruto let go of her blade arm just enough so that when she pulled it back he could latch onto her gauntleted wrist which he used to grab a hold with both hands on and swing around to throw her harshly into the side of a tree hard enough to fell it.

XxX

Yoruichi watched the fight with increasing apprehension, 'This fight is getting very heated. One of them is going to kill the other at this rate…'

XxX

Naruto watched Soi-Fon stand up, "You still in one piece there my little bee?" He asked, trying to get another reaction out of her, "I don't want to break you, but you're killing me here." He said honestly. Yoruichi had a place for this woman somewhere and he didn't want to hurt Yoruichi. For some reason he didn't want to hurt Soi-Fon either, nothing sexist about it, he simply liked the girl.

"Shut your mouth!" Soi-Fon roared back at him, "There's only one person that could ever call me that, and you sure as hell aren't her!" She held out Suzumebachi out in front of herself, "I'm going to kill you in two moves Uzumaki so get all of your regrets lined up in mind.

Naruto was once again fully disarmed and had his fingers twitching. Trying to time an opportunity to unseal something else before Soi-Fon could reach him. What would be faster, his hands or her Shunpo?

A slight hitch in Naruto's breath let Soi-Fon know he was making his move and she rushed towards him, 'Come on, give me anything here!' He thought to himself as his hand reached the inside of his coat, however before he could unseal anything Soi-Fon was right in his face and had stabbed Naruto in his chest. The only thing keeping the blade from going too deep was his arm crossing over his chest to reach in his coat.

Naruto let out a gasp and finished unsealing a weapon, a massive shuriken that he threw at Soi-Fon once she got back out of his range upon seeing his weapon. Naruto threw it at her and watched it pass through an afterimage of her, before he slumped against a tree holding his chest wound. His eyes widened when he saw a butterfly shaped stamp appear on his wound, "What the hell?"

"Nigeki Kessatsu (Death in Two Steps)…" Soi-Fon said, her voice echoing out from around him in the forest, "That was step one. Only one step remaining Uzumaki. Goodbye." She said smugly, as if he was already dead and buried.

Naruto grit his teeth, 'I'll be damned!' Blood leaked out from his mouth due to his injuries from the stab wound as he clapped his hands together and expanded them, a dark sphere of energy forming in between his hands, "I'll be damned if I go out like this! Chibaku Tensei (Heavenly Body Bursting from the Earth)!" He threw the sphere into the sky and watched as it began pulling pieces of the surrounding landscape up towards it in the form of an orb. Parts of the forest and the ground underneath it started getting sucked up towards the ball of gravity.

Soi-Fon found herself jumping between pieces being sucked up towards what was looking to be a large compressed orb. She was eventually caught between flying pieces of debris and found herself caught between them as she was stuck to the large ball in the air, "No! I won't lose!"

Naruto heard her scream of defiance and let out one of his own, "Right back at you my little bee, now get out of here!" He let his hands drop from using Chibaku Tensei and extended them out away from his body as if he were pushing something up and away, "Shinra Tensei (Heavenly Subjugation of the Omnipresent God)!"

XxX

Yoruihci watched as the massive sphere of debris moved away from where it was hanging in the air to high over the Seireitei, "Oh my god…" She said as she watched it hit the barrier above the stronghold and begin breaking apart.

She jumped down and began running towards Naruto swiftly.

XxX

Naruto's hands were still outstretched, holding the Shinra Tensei, pushing the monster ball of debris back into the barrier as if he were trying to punch it through and throw Soi-Fon from the Seireitei. Blood began leaking from Naruto's nose but he still held it, 'Using enough force to shove that damn thing up and out of here is killing me…'

"Naruto stop!" Yoruichi bounded up to him and headbutted him in the side, knocking him down and getting him to drop his jutsu. She quickly looked up to see the giant ball drop from the sky as it fell apart to the ground. After getting over her shock she turned back to Naruto who was still down breathing heavily, blood trailing from his mouth and nose as well as from the wound Soi-Fon left.

Speaking of the wound Soi-Fon left, upon seeing the butterfly mark still on it Yoruichi let out a sigh of relief, 'Okay, she's still alive.' Her shock returned when she saw Naruto getting back to his feet despite his injuries and haggard appearance, "What are you doing? Are you insane? Stop moving."

"Can't stop…" Naruto said, "I can't stay here… I need to leave, before Soi-Fon comes back. If we keep fighting I'm going to have to kill her Yoruichi-chan I swear." He almost dropped to his knee but caught himself, "I need to rest." He let out a cough that sprayed blood and let his Rinnegan fade, "Where do I go?"

Yoruichi could see how tired he was, "Soukyoku Hill… There is a cave on the side of the cliff. We need to get you there to rest. It's near the Senzaikyuu."

Naruto looked at the cat weakly, "I can't go there. It's too close, I'll attract attention."

"It's a secret hideout stupid." Yoruichi said snappishly before suddenly transforming, "I'll get you there. Just hold on to me." Whether he did it so easily and without dispute because he was so tired or because she was naked she did not know as she pulled out a long beige bone-like wand that she used as a hang-glider once it expanded and took shape, allowing them to take flight.

"I'll be fine with a little rest…" Naruto said softly, ignoring the voice in his head that was wondering just where she got that thing from, "Just a good night's sleep and I should be good to go." He insisted as he held on to Yoruichi tightly enough to avoid falling off, "Sorry about the blood."

Yoruichi let out a small laugh, "It's okay, there's a hot spring where we're going." Her face turned somewhat thankful as she looked over her shoulder, "Thank you Naruto."

"Wha?" He said not understanding why, "Why thank me?"

Yoruichi looked back at the signs of Naruto's fight with Soi-Fon, "For leaving her alive, for not actively trying to kill her. She's still very important to me."

"Couldn't kill…" He trailed off almost losing consciousness.

"What?" Yoruichi didn't understand what he had just tried to say.

Naruto spoke slightly louder this time, "Couldn't kill her even if I wanted to Yoruichi-chan… She reminds me of me… back when I first realized how alone I was."

Yoruichi looked back at him again to see that he had shut his eyes. She shook her head and continued to fly them towards the hideout, "Thank you." She said again to him.

"Sleep with me." Naruto mumbled lowly.

A tick mark appeared on Yoruichi's head, "I guess you must be dreaming or something."

"No dream." He said firmly, yet weakly, "Seriously… I want you to sleep with me. And I'm not even joking or trying to be funny… not even a little bit."

"Yep…" She insisted, choosing to ignore his last comment, "Just a stupid, stupid dream."

XxX

Soi-Fon pulled herself out of the rubble produced by Naruto's Chibaku Tensei collapsing and falling from the sky. He body was covered in cuts and bruises, her captain's haori was torn and her outfit underneath was rather beaten up as well. She looked around and tried to feel for Naruto's Reiryoku but found nothing.

With an angry look on her face she began limping slowly towards the 4th Division Headquarters to find someone to heal her. She was not going to let Uzumaki just slide with that lucky break. She had him, and as long as he was in her thoughts that crest on his chest would not fade, and once Suzumebachi touched that mark again Uzumaki Naruto was a dead man. As long as her will to keep the crest going held, he was one step away from death.

'This isn't over Uzumaki. We'll meet again. You won't escape the Seireitei and you will fall by my blade. I won't accept anything less than that. You are my target and I will not let you slip out of my grasp."

XxX

(The Next Morning – Underneath Soukyoku Hill)

Naruto's eyes cracked open to find himself surrounded by bedding in what appeared to be a replica of the training ground under Urahara's shop and the warehouse of the Visoreds. He sat up painfully, holding his chest where he was stabbed, "Yoruichi-chan?" Naruto called out to no one's response. He got up and began walking around looking for the beautiful woman, "Come on Yoruichi-chan, if you're going to leave you've got to tell someone what's going on."

Eventually he gave up looking and went to the entrance of the hideout where he made a clone, "Stay here in case Yoruichi-chan comes back." The clone saluted him and went back inside. As he looked out from the sheer cliff drop he thought out loud, "You know I have a perfect idea of what I could use this place for." He made three more Kage Bunshin who wordlessly ran inside and left him looking down. He shrugged to himself and fell from the precipice to the forest below.

He didn't really want to get into any kind of fight today. He had enough of fighting last night from Soi-Fon. There was no need for any more anarchy on this day, he didn't need to attract attention now that the worst case scenario had already happened. They were perceived as a legitimate threat if what Soi-Fon said to him last night was true. He had two objectives today, first to find out where the others were because if they were hurt, caught, or dead… well they were his only real objective on this mission of his. The second objective was to see how everything was going at large, the big picture. What was going on from the Gotei 13 side of the coin. How were they going to handle all of this? Were they going to send out extermination squads now? He needed to know these things and he needed to find the others to relay the information.

Getting caught and garnering attention would serve no purpose, this was strictly behind the scenes. It was time to show everyone exactly why he was able to exist around the world for as long as he had… and he would do that by not showing anyone anything at all. The only person that might be able to find him would be Soi-Fon, and he knew that if he was still feeling the effects of last night she damn well was also so he wouldn't have to worry about her for now.

It was time to go dark.

XxX

After moving about the Seireitei for a while Naruto heard the sounds of another fight taking place nearby. As he neared another squad HQ he saw a rather small girl with her hair done up in a bun engaging a blonde man with a bang over his eye, 'What the hell is going on?' He wondered to himself as the fighting began, the girl releasing her Zanpakutou at the man.

Naruto felt something amiss in the environment, and it seemed to be coming from a sword pinned to the wall. He noticed the multiple Shinigami in attendance had their full attention on the fight between two of their fellow comrades, while others looked between the fight and the sword in the wall.

Naruto quickly formed the tiger seal, hoping that any decent sensors either weren't there, or were preoccupied with stopping the fight that was currently happening, "Meisaigakure no Jutsu (Hiding With Camouflage Jutsu)." Naruto's body turned completely transparent as he snuck around the panic, keeping to the early morning shadows. Eventually finding his way to the roof just as the fighting died down, with a child captain stopping the fighting, Naruto reached down without looking, as he didn't want to risk being seen, and grabbing a hold of the sword in the wall.

Taking a Shinigami's Zanpakutou was no small task, even against the weaker ones, they kept a hold on them religiously. Naruto felt an influx of Reishi running through the sword and looked around, just seeing nothing and the feeling of something amiss in the air. He noticed the others looking at the roof where his hand was and thought he had been caught before he realized what they were saying. They thought there was a body pinned under that sword, 'Genjutsu! And it's really strong! Who cast that illusion?'

He looked back over the edge to see the Shinigami all talking about the man, Captain Aizen Sousuke, being murdered and staring at the sword in the wall, 'They're still under the genjutsu… all of them. Should I try to break it?' He asked himself, placing his hands in the ram seal planning to force out enough chakra to completely break the illusion over everyone before stopping himself, 'No… all that would do would be to alert even the poorest Shinigami to my position and these guys are all at least Lieutenants, I can sense it. If it's strong enough to catch all of them do I even have enough in me to break it? How was I never even under it? I suck at illusions.'

He closed his eyes, 'Something's not right. I can't stay here to think about it, I need to leave.'

XxX

(Soukyoku Hill Hideout)

"Oi! Yoruichi-chan, I'm back!" Naruto yelled as he entered the hideout and noticed a bandaged Ichigo in bed and Yoruichi in human form, they both noticed him walk inside, "My clone heard that Ichigo beat a captain. Way to go kid."

Yoruichi looked at him and smiled, "Well it appears that you did heal rather quickly. That's good." She blinked, "Wait, how did you get up here? You can't use Hohou to walk up here in the Seireitei."

Naruto nodded, "I know, for some reason I can't use my gravity techniques to walk up here either or stick to walls. It's really hard to channel chakra in this place for some reason, is it like that for everyone?"

"Yes." Yoruichi said, "The gates surrounding the Seireitei prevent you from gathering Reishi under your feet to walk on the air. But how did you get up here without me?"

Naruto grinned and flexed an arm, "I climbed." Naruto looked at the mask on the ground near Ichigo's body and noted that it looked extremely familiar, "What's with the mask?"

Yoruichi looked at Naruto seriously with her golden eyes exuding a serious aura, "That's not important right now Naruto." She looked at Ichigo and held up the glider wand, "Anyway, this is how I got you up here."

Ichigo took it from her hands and looked at it, "So with this you just put your spiritual energy in this and fly?"

"Yep!" Yoruichi said proudly, "It's a very unique, one of a kind artifact. You should feel honored."

"How do you even have anything like this?" Ichigo said somewhat accusingly, "You shape-shift, you heal wounds, and you have something like this… Yoruichi who are you?"

Naruto chimed in, "I'll tell you! She's sexy!"

"Be serious you idiot!" Ichigo shouted at Naruto. The conversation was broken when a massive oppressive aura set over everyone in the hideout, "This Reiatsu! It's _him_!" Ichigo said, getting the thought of the man who had defeated him in Karakura Town and took Rukia in his mind.

Naruto looked around as he clearly felt the power as well, but having fought Soi-Fon last night a captain's Reiatsu was something that he had gotten a taste of already, "This is the guy that beat you in Karakura? I can see why he sleepwalked through you then…"

"It's coming from the Senzaikyuu!" Yoruichi said, wondering why Byakuya had felt the need to release so much power as a show of force when Ichigo stood up, charging for the exit, "Whare do you think you're going?"

Ichigo turned around and snapped at her, "Hanatarou and Ganju were going to the Senzaikyuu! If I don't go then who's going to save them?" He transformed the wand and flew off on the hang-glider leaving Naruto and Yoruichi alone in the hideout.

"That dumb brat!" Yoruichi yelled in exasperation as she watched him fly off.

Naruto sighed, "Am I going to have to climb the rest of the way up now?"

Yoruichi ran a hand through her hair and paced around, "We need to go get him Naruto. Byakuya's going to slaughter him if he goes out as he is. You know it and I know it."

"How did he beat a captain?" Naruto asked her, "If he had fought Soi-Fon she would have killed him so fast it wouldn't have been funny."

Yoruichi looked at him, "He more or less outlasted the juggernaut captain of the Gotei 13. It was quite a battle, but that's not important. We need to stop him."

Nodding in understanding, Naruto spoke as he walked with her, "Yoruichi I have to ask if you know anyone in the Sereitei who uses illusions. We'll talk about it after we save boy-wonder."

* * *

Omake: Naruto Alone in the Rukongai (Day 3 of 46)

Naruto still had a long way to go and decided to walk through the 55th District instead of motor on through for a short break… also because-.

*growl*

-He was hungry.

"Man… I'm so hungry." He looked around to find somewhere to eat when a heavenly smell hit his nostrils. He sprinted over to a nearby stand, almost bowling over several people in the process and threw back the curtain, "Ten bowls of beef ramen and keep 'em coming!" Naruto yelled cheerfully, his salvation found.

"Wow!" The man behind the counter said, "That's a lot of money. You got the cash to pay for that much food?" Naruto immediately shoved a mass of bills in his face, "Um… I don't know what that is, but we don't use that currency."

Naruto looked at the money in his hand before going wide-eyed, "So I'm broke? No, I'm broke! I haven't been broke in forever!" He cried anime tears.

The vendor shook his head apologetically, "Sorry, no money, no food. Them's the breaks. Come back when you manage to scrounge something up."

Naruto walked out of the stand, his stomach continuing to bitch him out about getting some food in it, "What can I do to get money? I'm going to have to eat all the way to the gate so a quick fix might not do it." He shoved his hands in his pockets and a lightbulb went off in his head when he pulled out a notebook, "I wonder…" He fished through his inside coat pockets and pulled out a labeled scroll, "Yes! I've still got all of my old manuscripts! Now I need to find a publisher and I'm made all over again."

(Day 7 of 46)

Naruto sat next to three towering stacks of bowls as he polished off another, "Oi! Fill it up again, I've got a demon in my belly and it demands more ramen!"

The vendor gleefully filled it up and handed it over, "Whatever you say Uzumaki-sama, so…" He pulled out an orange book and held it in front of Naruto's face, "Can I get your autograph?"

Naruto blinked and slurped up the noodle in his mouth, "Man… this book sold like nobody's business. Soul Society has good print and distribution companies…" He shrugged and happily signed it before returning to eating while the vendor ran outside quickly.

"Uzumaki Naruto is in my stand, eating my ramen, and signing my book!"

Naruto heard the crowd outside break into a tizzy and formed a cross seal, depositing a clone of Naruto in the seat next to him, "Stay here, sign my autographs, eat this guy's ramen." He said, holding the bowl he was still eating, "I'm keeping this though. This is mine."

The clone gave Naruto a hearty thumbs up, "Sure thing boss!" He turned around and let Naruto slip out the back while the first mass of fans flew through the curtain holding up books and raving about the story, "Okay single-file line, hot women first, and in order of descending attractiveness! Then the men can get autographs if I still feel like it."

* * *

**Hi everybody. Not much to say on this occasion so I'll just leave it at this. I've still got homework to handle so I'll catch you all later. Kenchi out.**


	6. Bankai Days

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach, and neither do you. Does your self-esteem feel low enough yet? If it does, then let's start the chapter.

**Chapter 6: Bankai Days**

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(Senzaikyuu – Bridge Overlooking Soukyoku)

Ganju stood frozen staring out at a man in a captain's haori. He had long black hair and expensive looking hair pieces that left a few strands draping over his face in bangs as well as a white scarf that drifted behind him in the wind. The calm look of control on the man's face as well as the staggering amount of energy flying off of him was extremely unnerving for Ganju.

"I felt some faint Reiatsu heading towards the holding cell…" The man said, calmly staring Ganju down as if he weren't a threat, "I thought it was someone strong holding back their spiritual pressure, like the man that fought Soi-Fon of the 2nd Division, but apparently it was nothing but a big fat bug. How dull."

Rukia stood further back on the bridge closer to the tower she had been imprisoned in alongside a small, young, frail-looking male Shinigami. She tried moving forward by was stopped by the Shinigami with her, "Where are you going Rukia-san?"

Rukia tried pulling herself away, "Let go of me Hanatarou! If we don't stop this now then that man from the Shiba Clan will… die…" She fell to the ground breathing heavily as Hanatarou moved to help her, 'I've been in that cell surrounded by Sekkiseki (Spirit Reducing Stone) for so long, my Reiryoku is at its weakest. I can't even handle Byakuya-niisama's Reiatsu.'

Hanatarou put a hand on Rukia's shoulder, "It's okay Rukia-san. Ganju-san walked so calmly into the confrontation, he must have a secret plan that we couldn't think of. He has to." He said, voice full of belief.

Ganju had a good game face, but it belied his true thoughts, 'Ugh, just standing here is taxing. His Reiatsu is really strong damn it. With a difference in strength like this, a few petty little tricks won't do any good.' He quickly lunged at his opponent and drew his cleaver blade, 'I'm just going to have to take a gamble on this one!'

Rukia and Hanatarou stared at Ganju who had just lunged at a Shinigami captain head on in pure disbelief, 'No plan?'

Ganju drew his other hand back, revealing fireworks to use as a way to get closer and disorient, "Eat this!" However before he knew, Byakuya was behind him, having already slashed his arm without anyone even having seen it happen.

"Be gone." Byakuya said stoically as the blood sprayed from the wound on Ganju's arm, "My sword was not made to kill pests like you." He said without even turning to face him, as if he had simply walked past and nothing more. Hearing Ganju hit the ground and cry out in pain, he kept walking towards Rukia and Hanatarou until Ganju's voice stopped him.

"Hold on!"

Byakuya turned around to see Ganju standing with one arm completely useless, "Are you deaf? I told you to leave."

"Blah, blah, blah! You're so noisy with that old man demeanor of yours!" Ganju shouted at him defiantly, "I don't know how it is with you nobles, but cowards that can be scared away by something like this don't exist in the Shiba Clan!"

Byakuya turned around fully to face him, "So you're from the Shiba Clan? My apologies for going easy on you." Rukia looked on fearfully as Byakuya drew his Zanpakutou, "I'll make sure that you don't walk away from this alive."

Ganju looked at his curiously, "What are you going to do from so far away?" He asked.

"Don't do it Nii-sama!" Rukia shouted to Byakuya to try and stop him.

Byakuya held the sword directly up in front of his face, "Chire, Senbonzakura (Scatter, Thousand Cherry Blossom)." The blade of his sword disappeared into countless fragments that resembled cherry blossoms blowing away.

"Run away!" Rukia shouted at Ganju.

However it was too late. Before he could move or knew what happened he found himself cut to shreds by Byakuya's Zanpakutou release all over his body. The wounded man dropped to his knees as blood freely flew from his greatly wounded body.

Hanatarou looked at his fallen ally in horror, "Ganju-san…" He said quietly.

Byakuya turned abruptly and raised his sword at Hanatarou, planning to aim his attack at him and prompting Rukia to throw herself in front of him, "Nii-sama please stop! Don't kill him!"

Before Byakuya could complete his motion he found his sword arm held back by a man in a captain's haori with long white-hair and a slightly frail appearance, "Ho, that was scary." He said with a disarming smile, "I think that's enough, don't you Kuchiki-taichou?"

Rukia looked at the new arrival in recognition, "Ukitake-taichou!"

The man smiled at Rukia and gave her a friendly salute, "Oh Rukia! You've lost weight, how are you feeling?"

"What is the meaning of this?" Byakuya said accusingly to the fellow captain.

"That's what I should be saying." Ukitake replied, "Releasing a Zanpakutou in this area is a first-class offense, even if you are fighting the Ryoka. What were you thinking?"

"You are misinformed Ukitake-taichou." Byakuya said in a matter-of-factly manner, "It's a war time situation. The ban on releasing a Zanpakutou was lifted to deal with the threat."

"War time situation?" Ukitake exclaimed in shock, "How can an invasion of a few intruders end up like that? Is this related to the murder of Aizen?" He had heard of one of the Ryoka running amok all over the area the previous day, even hearing of how the 1st Division HQ was thoroughly painted multicolors and how thousands of issues of magazines depicting one of the attackers had been printed and distributed around the Sereitei, but it never seemed that serious to him until news of Aizen's death reached him that morning. The jury was still out on what had happened.

All of a sudden a high-level Reiatsu settled on everyone conscious on the bridge. Ukitake found himself rather troubled with the sudden presence of such power, "What's this strong Reiatsu? It's at the level of a captain, but I don't recognize this person. Who is he? And where did he come from?"

Rukia however, felt the familiar traces of the power in the air, "This Reiatsu can't be… There's no way." Suddenly a figure flew past her at a high speed and stopped above her before landing next to her on the bridge, getting everyone's full attention, "I-Ichigo…" She whispered to herself, almost not believing who was standing there.

Ichigo walked past her, "Hanatarou are you okay? I didn't think you would run into another guy like this when I sent you ahead. Where's Ganju?" The smaller Shinigami pointed over to where Ganju's body lay, "I see…" Ichigo finally turned to Rukia, "Rukia I came to save you." However her facial expression lay blank, as if she hadn't registered what he had said, "Why are you making that face? I said I came here to get you out of this."

"You idiot." Rukia said as tears started springing to her eyes, "I told you not to come after me. I forbade you to come here. And now look at you, covered in wounds… you're all beat up, you dumbass."

Ichigo looked back at where the two captains were standing, "You can get as mad as you want later. After I defeat him." He said, looking straight at Byakuya.

"Ichigo." Rukia tried calling out to him to get him to stop.

"And now you're probably going to tell me to run." He said, cutting her off from saying anymore, "There's no way I'm doing that, don't make me laugh. It wasn't easy getting all the way here you know." He looked back at Rukia, "No matter what you say it won't make a difference, I'm dragging you out of here if I have to, so don't bother trying to get me to back down idiot!"

"What?" Her shock was then replaced with outrage at how she had just been spoken to, "What the hell does that mean? What kind of weird rescue attempt is this?"

"Shut up!" Ichigo snapped back, "You're the one being rescued so quit babbling! You should crouch in the corner, shiver in fear, and scream, 'Help, help!'"

The two glared at each other until a smile came to Rukia's face, "You never change do you? You're still the same as before, never listening to anything I say."

Ichigo turned his back to her to face Byakuya again, "Of course! You always nag and worry about me. You should worry more about yourself right now. But don't worry, I won't die yet." He said with a grin, "I've gotten way stronger while you were away."

Ukitake was looking at Ichigo curiously, "Byakuya who is that?"

"He's a nobody." The aristocratic Shinigami captain said in reply, "Compared to the person laying behind you he is not important. He's just a Ryoka that I am going to destroy. I'm ending this meaningless skirmish here. It all stops here."

Ichigo smirked at Byakuya, "Look at you standing there all carefree. You didn't even move forward while I was talking to Rukia for so long."

"Who do you think you're talking to?" Byakuya said right back to the orange-haired savior, "Why would I need to sneak up on the likes of you? Don't think too highly of yourself, insignificant scum." As a show of force, Byakuya flooded the bridge with his Reiatsu, enough to bring Rukia and Hanatarou to their knees.

Ichigo simply held Zangetsu out, prepared to fight, "Hm." Byakuya said, mildly impressed by his resolve, "Not even a budge in front of this Reiatsu. It seems that you have indeed gained strength. I don't know how you got your Shinigami powers back, but you should have just returned to your normal human life, instead of throwing it away after so luckily keeping it. How foolish."

"I'm not throwing my life away." Ichigo said intently, "I'm going to beat you and then I'm going home."

"I just said don't think so highly of yourself, insignificant scum." Byakuya said before vanishing via Shunpo, however Ichigo blocked his strike at his back, keeping Byakuya from wounding or killing him with one move.

"You said I think too highly of myself. I saw every single step Kuchiki Byakuya!" Ichigo said before throwing Byakuya away from himself and facing off one more.

Byakuya narrowed his eyes at Ichigo, "I see. You've improved more than I thought. Well in that case…" He held his unreleased Zanpakutou up in front of his face much like he had against Ganju, "Before you start becoming too full of yourself I'll have to show you what you can't compensate for in 1000 years of training. The decisive difference in strength between us."

"Ichigo run!" Rukia screamed at him, not wanting Ichigo to share Ganju's fate.

"Chire-." Before Byakuya could complete his release command, a cloth wrapped around his sword that was held by Yoruichi, "Well… Shihouin Yoruichi. I haven't seen your face in a while. You disappeared for 100 years. Everyone thought you were dead."

"Yoruichi thanks for coming to save me." Ichigo said, sword still brandished, "But please move. I have to defeat him."

Yoruichi let off a scoff, "Defeat him? By yourself?" She turned around and looked at him from one side of her face, "Idiot."

Before he could say anything, Naruto appeared behind him, wrapping one arm around his neck and his other hand through his bandages into the wound on his body. Naruto had a serious look on his face as Ichigo looked back at him in shock before shrugging, "Best ninja ever." Naruto pulled his hand out and used it to catch Ichigo as he slumped forward, unconscious, "Got him Yoruichi-chan."

"It's a drug isn't it?" Ukitake questioned as he saw what Naruto had done, "Either Gaten or Houten. Releasing a powerful tranquilizer into the body. You're here to save him." He then got a good look at Naruto and matched it with a description, "Wait you're the Ryoka that has been causing a ruckus all around the Seireitei, Uzumaki Naruto."

Naruto hoisted Ichigo over a shoulder, "Yep. Nice to meet you, you seem nice." He looked at Byakuya, "He seems like he has a stick in his ass. So you're Kuchiki Byakuya…" He stared at the man for a moment, "You have a nice house."

Byakuya simply stared at Naruto blankly, "Yes… that was you that ruined the clothes of my clan wasn't it?"

Naruto blinked, "Now you can't prove that."

"You wrote 'Uzumaki Naruto was here and did this' in the ground outside." Byakuya countered, speaking plainly, "You are a very unusual person."

Naruto didn't immediately respond, simply staring at Byakuya before pointing at him, "Are you related to someone named Uchiha or Hyuuga… because you look and act like the illegitimate love-child of two people I used to know… thought I don't want to know how they would have gone about making you." He said with a shiver before snapping his fingers, "I've got it! You could be a clone!" Byakuya for some reason felt a very strong desire to stab Naruto at the moment, and not just because he was a Ryoka.

"Naruto focus." Yoruichi said, getting Naruto to stop joking around, as he immediately put his game face back on, "Get ready to move."

Ukitake spoke to Yoruichi, "You're trying to save him Yoruichi?"

"Did you think that I would allow that senpai?" Byakuya said coolly, "No senpai, you won't be able to leave here freely, you or Uzumaki Naruto."

Yoruichi smirked at Byakuya confidently, "When did you learn to talk so big Byakuya? Did you ever once beat me in a game of tag?"

Byakuya's gaze leveled on her, "Should we try again then?" He said before they both blurred from sight.

Naruto's muscles tensed up to prepare to move in case he was attacked, but let Yoruichi handle it for now. Byakuya moved past Yoruichi and turned rapidly to swing his sword only to realize he had missed as Yoruichi had taken Ichigo's body from Naruto and had made to hop over the railing on the bridge. Yoruichi smirked, thinking she had him, until he appeared behind her, "You can't escape me with that level of Shunpo."

He swung again at point-blank range, however this time Yoruichi dodged and hopped on his arm tauntingly, still holding Ichigo, "You can't catch me with _that_ level of Shunpo." She suddenly blurred out of his range and reappeared atop the tower nearby, "3 days. In 3 days I'll make him stronger than you." She said, patting Ichigo who she was holding, "This little fight is postponed until then. You can follow if you want to, but 'Shunshin (Flash Goddess)' Yoruichi won't be caught so easily!" She said before blurring away.

Byakuya turned around to confront Naruto, seeing him still standing there with his arms crossed and a bored look on his face, "Finally. I thought you forgot about me."

"You didn't run." Byakuya said. He had completely forgotten Naruto had been there and Naruto hadn't attacked him either, he had simply waited, "What are you here for?" He said planning to move on him and disable him quickly.

Naruto grinned, "I'm here for you to leave a message with. I'm not Naruto. The real Naruto was long gone while you were playing with Yoruichi-chan. I'm a clone. Killing me wouldn't do anything. It might make you feel better though."

"You're not a Shinigami." Ukitake said to the clone, "You're not a Quincy like one of the other Ryoka that we've heard of either, but nor do you seem to be a regular human. What are you?"

The clone backed to the railing and leaned against it, his hands on the back of his head, "I'm just your humble sage… just travelling existence trying to find a balance." He looked at Rukia intently, "Don't get comfortable. Boy-wonder's going to be back here for you soon enough, just wait. And some advice, this beating yourself up for whatever reason shouldn't come into play when someone actually comes for you and shows you that you're worth the effort, because the way you want him to just run and leave you here is insulting. Later." The clone rolled back-first over the railing and took the long fall.

Byakuya and Ukitake both looked over the railing shortly after the clone's departure to see a cloud of smoke in mid-air, but no falling Naruto-replica. Byakuya turned abruptly to leave the bridge, ignoring Hanatarou and Rukia, "Hey, where are you going Byakuya? What about the others, aren't they the reason you're here?"

"I lost my interest." He replied disinterestedly as he walked away, not turning to face any of them, "Do whatever you want with them."

Ukitaki scratched his head as he watched his fellow captain walk away, "Ho, that guy always does whatever he wants at any given moment." He turned his attention to Rukia who collapsed on the bridge, 'Finally collapsed after the pressure suddenly lifted when Byakuya left. Can't blame her.' He let out a sigh, "What a bother… maybe I should just call for them? Oi, Sentarou! Kiyone! Please come out!"

Two Shinigami, one, a petite girl with dark blonde hair and the collar of a white shirt peeking through the top of her Shinigami uniform, and a man with black hair, a white headband, white shoulder straps, and a goatee, appeared at Ukitake's side, "You called captain?" The woman asked as both of them were bowing.

Ukitake gave them both a dry look, "So you were both here after all… How long were you both standing there?"

"Since, 'Ho, that was scary.' Ukitake-taichou!" The man answered earnestly.

"So from the beginning…" Ukitake said, an exasperated look on his face, "Didn't I say that it was dangerous so don't come?"

The man abruptly stood up and saluted him, "I'm very, very sorry, but I respect you too much captain and I couldn't help but follow you wherever you went!" He said frantically.

"That was so cheap Sentarou!" The woman next to the saluting man said before turning to Ukitake, "Captain I feel the exact same way! Actually I like-. No, respect you even more!"

The two broke into bickering over who respected Ukitake more until the captain himself took control of the situation, "Alright enough. Kiyone contact the 4th Division right away. Someone here is gravely wounded here and we need a top-notch medic dispatched right away." He said to his female underling, "Sentarou, please carry Rukia back into the prison."

The man nodded and walked over to Rukia and Hanatarou, "Move aside brat."

"I refuse!" Hanatarou said, trying to protect Rukia, "I won't let Rukia-san be placed back in that prison!"

"Get the hell out of the way brat!" Sentarou screamed at Hanatarou, scaring the daylights out of the young man, "Do you think I want to put her back in that damned place?" He moved past him and picked up Rukia, carrying her back inside, "Sorry Kuchiki. Ukitake-taichou and I will definitely get you out of there. Just hang in there a bit longer."

Kiyone followed after him to bicker some more, leaving Hanatarou and Ukitake alone on the bridge with Ganju's body, with the young Shinigami unable to word his thoughts correctly, "You're trying to ask me why I'm helping you two, aren't you?" Ukitake ventured as a guess towards his intentions, getting a nod out of him, "Of course I'd help. Until we figure out who murdered Aizen you two are prime sources of information as well as top suspects so I can't just let you die here. Furthermore, although it was completely half-assed and clumsy you did try to rescue a member of my division. So of course I won't stand here and watch your friend die." He finished with a smile.

XxX

Yoruichi set Ichigo's body on the ground and took deep breaths of exhaustion after shutting a secret entrance to the hideout, "Phew… It's got to be because I haven't had a real fight in 100 years, but I'm fighting so hard to catch my breath just after a few hundred Shunpo steps. I'm sure a lot weaker." She slumped to the floor, sitting against the wall and looked at Ichigo's body, "Wake up Ichigo so I can get you stronger. When you get up I'll tell you about Zangetsu's true power, and a few secrets."

"Oi, Yoruichi-chan!" Her attention turned to the cliff entrance. She got up and walked over to see Naruto hanging upside down in mid-air a short distance out from a place to safely drop, "A little help here?"

Yoruichi blinked at him in puzzlement, "How on earth did you end up like that?"

Naruto grinned at her, "When you left I took advantage of all of the ruckus and ran towards the edge of that cliff. I tied some ninja wire to my feet so I could jump off and swing down here and anchored it with a kunai, only I didn't see how far out from the cliff the hole was and now I'm here." He chuckled sheepishly, "If I swing towards you can you catch me and hold on so I can cut myself down?"

After getting back inside, Naruto relayed what he had done earlier that day and had seen, even up to the Shinigami that seemed to be under an illusion, "Do you know any Shinigami with powers over illusions like that?"

She thought of it for a long while, "It's been a long time and I never exactly took catalogue of what everyone could do. I know from speaking with them personally in the past Naruto, and powers like that are very rare. Anyway, we have something more important to worry about right now, like ourselves." She gestured towards the still unconscious Ichigo, "I need to get him ready to fight Byakuya and to do that I need to get him to activate his Bankai (Final Release)."

"What's a Bankai?" Naruto asked inquisitively, taking a seat next to her against the wall she had been sitting against at first, "Is it really something that important, because that Byakuya guy was no joke. I thought you were going to make me fight him off when we went to go grab Boy-wonder here. I just got through fighting Soi-Fon last night. Two captains in less than 24 hours is not my idea of a good time if last night was any indication."

Yoruichi smiled at him, "Oh you might have been able to take him." She said, playfully hitting him in the arm, "And Bankai could be just what we need. The power it will give Ichigo is something that we can't overlook or go any further without, not if we were to fight the captains that are being deployed to take us on now. Every captain with the exception of Zaraki Kenpachi has the ability to utilize Bankai, a power-up for their Zanpakutou past the level of Shikai."

"It's another Zanpakutou power?" He asked, "So Soi-Fon had another move that she could have used during our fight? Why didn't she use it? Not that I'm complaining, because she hit hard enough without another power-up." He looked at his chest, "This mark is _still_ on my fucking chest! Why won't it go away?"

Yoruichi laughed at him, "Looks like someone's still thinking about you…" She teased in a sing-song voice, "It's okay. It won't do anything as long as she doesn't touch it again and she can't find you so it should be fine. It's impressive though. It's been at least 12 hours and it's still on. When I was here she could only will it to hold for 30 minutes."

Naruto poked at his chest, "I don't see what's so funny. If she touches this thing again I! Will! Die!" He shouted at the dark-skinned beauty, "Why won't she be able to find me? If I know her; first of all after last night she's going to be pissed, second of all, if she's anything like me she is not going to accept the end of that fight the way that it ended. She's going to be looking for me. Doesn't this thing act like a beacon or something?"

Yoruichi shook her head, "No… and she won't be looking for you either because you beat her up pretty bad and she doesn't have your freakish, scary ability to heal. So that means she went to the 4th Division for treatment."

By now Naruto knew that the 4th Division were the medics of the Seireitei, the healers. And nothing about what Yoruichi just said sounded good to him at all, "And this is going to keep her from running right out and hunting my sexy blonde ass down why?" He said incredulously, "If it was me I would jump right out as soon as I could walk without a limp."

Yoruichi gave him a knowing grin, "Let's just say that you're safe and leave it at that Naruto. Trust me, Soi-Fon isn't going to be out and about for a while, and she sure won't be out looking for you."

Naruto looked at her in confusion before smacking his lips and simply asking his question, "Um… Why?"

XxX

(4th Division Headquarters – Medical Bay)

Soi-Fon was fighting back a burning desire to sneeze repeatedly as she hastily put her uniform back on, feeling she had to follow up on her battle last night with Uzumaki Naruto, 'He won't get away from me. How far could he have gotten? All I have to do is find him again and finish him off.'

"Where do you think you're going taichou?"

A rather calm, soothing voice stopped Soi-Fon in her tracks as she had gotten to putting on her sandals. She turned almost mechanically towards the door of her room and found the captain of the 4th Division, Unohana Retsu, standing there giving her a beautiful smile. She was a beautiful woman that had long black hair worn in a single braid in the front and blue eyes. In addition to the usual captain Shinigami outfit, she wore an obi instead of the usual sash that the others wore.

Soi-Fon slowly started trying to place her sandal on her foot, never taking a wary eye off of the captain of the medical squad, "I need to get back out and find the dangerous Ryoka Uzumaki Naruto. I fought him last night and he has to be out there somewhere, still wounded. He couldn't have gotten far."

Unohana shook her head, "I haven't released you or cleared you for duty yet taichou. We already have one captain deceased and another in worse condition than you. I would like to not lose any more high ranking officers just to let them go chasing after one Ryoka."

"That's why I have to go after him!" Soi-Fon insisted vehemently, "This Ryoka has demonstrated skills in infiltration, sabotage, and assassination that at the very least reach my own level! For all we know he could have been the one that murdered Aizen-taichou and he's still out there. Any one of the other high-ranking Shinigami could be next unless someone stops him and none of you would be able to do so!"

"You mean this Uzumaki Naruto?" Unohana said, producing a magazine with the cover emblazoned with Naruto's grinning face, blown-up to fill the page, "Somehow these found their way all over the Seireitei yesterday. For being a completely narcissistic, self-gratifying piece meant to be a joke it's surprisingly well-written and entertaining. Huh, did you know that he's an author? That must be why."

Soi-Fon looked at the magazine in her hand with a twitching eye, "The fact that he infiltrated the HQ necessary to even make that proves my point. He's dangerous Unohana-taichou. He plays the clown but in battle he's a killer, don't be fooled."

"Be that as it may." She said, putting the magazine up, "You won't be hunting for him until you're cleared so please put your hospital clothing back on and get back into bed, please." Unohana's smile told one story, but the presence she was generating and the aura permeating the room prompted Soi-Fon to falter and slowly do as she asked, dropping the tense atmosphere significantly, "Thank you Soi-Fon-taichou. Honestly, despite his rowdy demeanor and attitude, Zaraki-taichou is a better patient than the rest of you."

Soi-Fon said nothing as she slid back into her bed, 'That's probably because he isn't even awake yet and you scare us all half to death when we're in the hospital. As much as he's here he probably knows better by now. Barbarian or not.' She blinked in confusion when the magazine was placed on her bed and looked up at Unohana.

"So that you don't get bored." Unohana said as she exited the room, leaving Soi-Fon alone.

Soi-Fon glared at the magazine before the silence of the room and the fact that she couldn't even get up to meditate got to her, "Know your enemy I guess…" She said to herself as she flipped it open and began to read.

XxX

(A While Later – Soukyoku Hill Hideout)

"Where are you going?" Yoruichi asked Naruto as she saw him walking towards the cliffside entrance to the hideout.

Naruto rolled his shoulder joint in an effort to stretch, "You don't need me here to teach the kid Bankai do you? I mean I don't know anything about how you're going to train him but I doubt I'll be any use unless you want me to fight him."

She looked down at the young Shinigami who had yet to awaken, "No, I guess I don't need you to teach him Bankai. But I do need you here. You haven't come face to face with an opponent using Bankai before and I should tell you now, it increases their strength 5 to 10 times higher than it previously was."

Naruto's eyes hardened, "10 times stronger. And again I ask, why didn't Soi-Fon use Bankai to try and kill me?"

Yoruichi shrugged, "I'm not even carrying my Zanpakutou with me because I would rather use my hands. It's not that much of a stretch to say that she wouldn't like using it. Soi-Fon isn't a flashy fighter so her Bankai must go against her style of fighting. Others are usually luckier with their Bankai as it will go with their style of fighting, but none of them should be taken lightly. You should be here to witness it if he achieves it so that you will not have the experience just thrown at you and you can at least learn the amount of Reiatsu that a full release can generate."

"More powers huh?" Naruto said to her as he began to walk over to Ichigo, "Well I still have a boatload of moves that you haven't seen yet Yoruichi-chan. Please don't underestimate me and think me weak. I think I'm getting used to whole idea of fighting these Shinigami. Old soldiers like me always have a couple of tricks up our sleeves." He kicked Ichigo and left his body as he began to stir.

"So _now_ where are you going?" Yoruichi asked as he walked further into the hideout, towards the large training area.

"I can't leave apparently to do some more work, so I'm going to go make sure something I set up earlier works for when I'll need it." He said as he got further and further away, "Wonder-boy's awake and he looks rather pissed."

Yoruichi looked down at Ichigo who was looking at her angrily before letting out a sigh, 'Well I guess it's time to explain Bankai and hope he isn't brick-headed enough to think he can win without it.'

XxX

(Later That Night)

Naruto happily deposited himself into a hot spring, throwing his hands up behind his head in order to relax, "Well I don't know about you Wonder-boy, but my training went great! I'm done, so all we're doing is waiting on you and your giant butcher's knife to get to Bankai and we can go save your friend."

Ichigo, still having not forgiven Naruto for shoving his hand into his wound earlier that day leveled a glare on the shinobi, "Well wonderful for you. My Zanpakutou is a slave driver and is trying to kill me." He looked up at the ceiling, "This is a good spring though. Though I can't even tell whether it's day or night… You think I can do it? Get my Bankai?"

"It's up to you." Naruto said, sighing in comfort with his eyes closed and his head tilted back, "It's about how bad you really want it. Nothing I can say is going to push you if you really don't have it in you to fight." He went silent for a second before speaking again, "Is there a butterfly mark still on my chest?"

"Uh, yeah." Ichigo said before looking at it and paying attention to it, "I thought it was a tattoo or something. It looks gay actually."

Naruto let out a groan, "I know… It's a fucking butterfly. Would it make it any better if I said a girl gave it to me?" He looked down at it, "Well at least I'm on her mind." He said absently with a smile, "She's so hot, she's a captain, and she'd totally kill _you_ in like 5 minutes. Hell Yoruichi would kill you in like 3 minutes. You better get that Bankai in a hurry now!"

Ichigo glared at him, "Hey I already beat a captain, you didn't. You fought to a draw."

Naruto chuckled, "I wasn't trying to kill her, you were trying to kill your opponent. Hell, I heard the guy handicapped himself and you still only fought him to a draw, because if Yoruichi had to pick you up off the field and bring you here afterwards while you were out of it you sure didn't beat him."

Ichigo growled at Naruto as he took that as a challenge. With the day he had been having thus far he really wasn't in the mood for any smarmy remarks, "You think you can take me?"

Naruto gave him a confident smile, "With my bare hands. You're 500 years too soon to step up to me. I've forgotten more about fighting than you're ever going to learn. Tell me, would you pick a fight with Yoruichi-chan?"

"No." Ichigo responded. The woman was teaching him something that he didn't even know yet and knew more about Shinigami and the Soul Society in general than him. A combination of those things told him he wasn't going to win a fight with her, "But you're not her. You're some guy."

Naruto shook his head, "Really? Because I'd pick a fight with Yoruichi-chan right here right now and feel pretty damn good about it were it not for the fact that my desire to have her fall madly in love with me greatly outweighs my desire to assert my dominance over someone strong… unless that would get me a step closer to achieving the former in which case I need to find her right now and call her out." He noticed Ichigo roll his eyes, "What, you don't think Yoruichi is awesome? You're out of your rabid-ass mind."

"She's a Shinigami and I'm a human. It doesn't matter what I think about her." Ichigo said resolutely, "Besides, she's so much older than us."

"Older than _you_." Naruto accentuated to prove his point, "I ain't no Shinigami, but I'm older than her. I can safely say that she's nowhere near my age so I couldn't care less about that. And far as I've seen the only difference between a soul and a human is the life-span… which means that to me, there is no difference." He noticed Ichigo looking at him oddly, "Oh, I didn't tell you yet? I'm immortal. Don't go spreading that around back in the world of the living."

Ichigo just stared at him before throwing his hands in the air abruptly, "You know what? I'm not even going to call you out on that because let me tell you about what I've been doing. I fought a berserker that almost cleaved me in half about 30 times, had a bonding moment with my Zanpakutou, got rescued by our cat guide who I found out is not only female but transformed into a grown woman who appeared in front of me stark naked, flew off on some kind of hang glider, got within arm's reach of the person I came here to save but then had to leave because the naked woman from before showed up and let some weird blonde guy shove his arm into my stomach and knock me out, I then realized that my sword has a second super-powerful form and to get it I have to fight the spirit of my sword and find the right sword that is actually my Zanpakutou's true form… and my Zanpakutou spirit is mean as hell. So yeah, hearing that you're immortal is huge, but with everything else going on I might as well not care. Man this is one hell of a summer vacation!"

Naruto just sat in the water looking at Ichigo, "Feel good to let all of that out?" Ichigo nodded, taking a calming deep breath, "Good, because that took so long if I weren't immortal I'd be pissed that you took up so much of my time just now."

"Mind if I join you?" Yoruichi's voice reached both Ichigo and Naruto's ears as she came into sight beginning to remove her clothes.

"Yes, go away/No, come on in!" Both Ichigo and Naruto said respectively.

"…I'm coming in." Naruto pumped his fist in victory while Ichigo looked away until he heard Naruto groan in disappointment and he allowed himself to look to see that Yoruichi was in her cat form swimming around. She smirked when she heard Ichigo exhale in relief, "You lecher, you were really disappointed that you didn't see me naked. I call Naruto a pervert but you're just as bad as him, at least he doesn't try to be something he's not."

Ichigo glared at her as she kept swimming around, "Don't make me drown you."

"So how was your training?" She asked them both, making conversation with them.

Naruto pointed a fist at Yoruichi and grinned, "I'm good to go Yoruichi-chan. Just say the word and I'm ready for action."

The cat/woman looked at him inquisitively, "What is it that you were doing? All I saw you doing was just sitting still over by yourself surrounded by two of your clones doing the same thing like some kind of guru."

Naruto wagged his finger, "Sage actually. And I can't tell you until I actually have to use it."

Yoruichi gave him a deadpan look, "Fine, I'll just make you use it the next time we fight." Naruto winked at her and she turned her attention to Ichigo, "So how about you? What do you think of your training?"

Ichigo scratched his scalp, "It's rough, and I can't tell if I'm any closer or not. Man, Geta-Boushi sure put some work into that doll you made me put Zangetsu's spirit into. And he made this entire place too?"

"He sure did." She said, "He built this place as a playground when we were kids and we would train here later when he joined the Gotei 13 and I entered the Onmitsukidou." She swam around and past him.

Ichigo turned to ask her a question when he abruptly turned back around, "Why did you transform back into your human form?" He asked, getting flustered at seeing her naked.

"She's covered by the water Wonder-boy." Naruto said with a grin at seeing his reaction, "You've got some things to experience in life kid. Stop taking everything so seriously. You aren't in a fight, you're in a comforting bath surrounded by friends… one of whom is a hot woman."

Turning to look at Naruto to keep his eyes from drifting to Yoruichi who kept finding his reactions at her transformations amusing, Ichigo glared at him, "You take things too lightly. We're in the middle of a battle with tons of Shinigami that want to kill us and all I've seen you do is joke and laugh at everything. How strong can you be?"

Naruto's grin dropped, "You're lucky Yoruichi-chan wants you in one piece so you can learn your Bankai, otherwise I'd be dragging you out of this spring over to the training field and showing you what's what. If I took everything seriously and looked at the world the way you do I would have driven myself insane a long time ago. Existence is a horrible ugly thing, and just when you think you've seen all of the heinous stuff that people can come up with something else even worse comes along. If I don't keep an upbeat outlook on everything with the way that the world is I couldn't take it, I just don't know what I would do."

Ichigo's eyes widened, "What are you talking about?"

Naruto sighed and rubbed his temple, "You know the only reason I fought those Hollows when we met was because I was actually around while they were attacking? If hadn't been there and I had just heard about what had happened I don't think I would have tried doing anything." He noticed Yoruichi and Ichigo both looking at him listening to his every word now, "People and Hollows, they really aren't that different. Hollows kill people and eat their souls… well at least that serves a purpose. I've saved people, entire groups of people, and then had to turn around and see or hear about those people I saved killing another group of people. Humans and Hollows both have the same capacity for committing evil, and I'm certain that Shinigami do too."

He noticed that neither Yoruichi nor Ichigo had said anything to him and felt that the atmosphere had been killed, "I'm getting out." He said, moving to leave the hot spring, "Wonder-boy is probably going to want to get out soon so that he can keep getting his ass kicked tomorrow. He still needs Bankai." Naruto wrapped a towel around his waist and walked away.

XxX

(Later That Night)

Ichigo went back to training with Zangetsu after the time in the hot spring feeling refreshed and ready for action, continuing to fight his sword's spirit while still searching for his Bankai's true form.

Naruto was incredibly grateful that this place underneath Soukyoku Hill was so large, because he didn't want to have to be near Ichigo or Yoruichi and answer any questions or even talk about what he had just gotten through saying to them at the bath. It was his own problem, it had always been his problem, and it always would be his problem since he was the only one that would ever stay alive long enough to care or even have a chance of doing anything about it.

'Thousands of years and the time still hasn't come where people truly understand each other. Most of the time it's like no one even seems to try. And now there's all of this stuff about Shinigami too?' He thought to himself inside of his bedroll. The ceiling of the training area, just like at Urahara's place or at the Visoreds' warehouse always depicted a sunny day, so he never knew what time it was. His internal clock was screwed.

"Hey." He heard Yoruichi say from nearby, "Are you feeling alright?"

Naruto sat up and nodded at her, "Yeah, I just can't sleep. So Ichigo's gotten back to work on his Bankai?" Yoruichi nodded, "Why are you here and not there helping him?"

Yoruichi frowned and sat down close to Naruto, "Because only he can do it for himself. There's not a whole lot I can do except force him to take a break every now and then and Zangetsu usually does that himself." She put a hand on his shoulder, "Do you want to talk about anything?"

Naruto chuckled, "Yoruichi-chan you don't have enough free time to listen to all of my problems. It's alright. I've been dealing with my own stuff alone for countless years. Just worry about Wonder-boy and getting him and his friends out alive."

"And what about you?" She shot back at him, "If we're worrying about ourselves and you're worrying about us too then who's going to worry about you? You say this like you don't expect me to try and help you with your problems. I'm the entire reason you're here. Immortal or not you're still a human and you're still my responsibility. If your mind isn't right it might get you killed when the time comes to fight."

Naruto shook his head before Yoruichi gave him a stern look that told him he wasn't being given an option, "You want to know something I've come to learn? I have a dream that seems totally impossible, to bring peace to the world, and I've only come up with a way to make it work some of the time. It's not about changing the world Yoruichi-chan, the status quo brings about the most peaceful eras I've ever seen. Changing the world causes panic and strife, and anger, and fear, which leads to conflict. So it's not about changing the world, it's about doing your best to keep the world just the way it is. Less life is lost that way." He turned his head and looked at her, "You know?"

Yoruichi shook her head and put a small smile on her face, "You know, when you say stuff like that it makes me really believe that you've been around for as long as you keep implying you have, because only an old man could say something that sounds so profound, confusing, and totally out of place."

Naruto started laughing at her response, wiping a tear of humor from his eye, "Ah, I needed that." He lay back down in his bedroll and looked up at the ceiling, "Every now and then I need to let off a little steam. I'm fine now, what do I have to worry about? As long as I stay alive I'll have all the time in the world to work out an answer, and I won't stop until I do, it was a promise. And I always keep my promises." He felt Yoruichi crawl into the bedroll with him and drape herself atop him, placing her head on his chest, "Yoruichi-chan?"

"Shut up Naruto." She said, pulling herself close, "I've got nothing to do, Ichigo is training, and you look like you could use a friend."

"My friends die." Naruto remarked, "Even when I keep them alive they still die and time doesn't pass for me at all."

Yoruichi rolled her eyes, "Well, this one isn't going anywhere for a long, long, long time. The advantages of being a Shinigami you know." She looked up at him with her golden eyes, "You grope me or do anything that I don't say is okay and I'll tear you apart."

"Got it." Naruto said quickly to quell any misgivings she may have had with doing this. He may have been a pervert, but that was something he developed out of boredom and loneliness over a long period of time, "Would holding you get me killed?" He asked.

"No, it wouldn't." She said, prompting Naruto to wrap his arms around her, pulling them closer.

"Would trying to fall asleep right now get me killed?" He asked her next.

"What else are you going to do? You're not leaving until Ichigo gets Bankai and you told me that you were ready for the battle. Sleep. You're going to need all the rest you can get." She said shutting her eyes to catch some sleep as well. She hadn't gotten any since before getting Naruto away from the aftermath of his fight with Soi-Fon. Naruto nodded and decided at that moment to plant a kiss on her forehead, getting Yoruichi to look at him in surprise, "What the hell?"

Naruto shut his eyes, "Sometimes it's easier to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission when it's something that you really want."

Yoruichi looked at the blonde in confusion, "Something you really want?"

Naruto cracked an eye, "Yoruichi-chan you're the first friend I've decided to try and make in 1000 years." She looked at him in shock, "I've had acquaintances, but everyone I meet dies so I stopped getting too close to people. I just kept moving and travelling, never returning until too much time had passed and they forgot about me or died."

"Stupid." She mumbled lowly to him, "Maybe that's why you seem to be so insane to me and others? Because you've only had yourself to deal with for so long. I know being around you for too long would make me go crazy." She said before putting a soft kiss on his lips, "Don't be that kind of person that tries to do everything on their own. There will always be someone willing to help you. And I don't want to hear any of your nonsense about me dying before you or something like that… Naruto-ojiisan." She lay her head back down on his chest

"Whatever you say…" Naruto said, closing his eyes once more to sleep, "Yoruichi-obaachan." He yawned out, grinning when he felt her hit him in the ribs. The two settled into a comfortable silence as the only sounds were the sounds of Ichigo locked in combat with Zangetsu.

"This doesn't leave the cave…"

"Why? You embarrassed? Or is there someone else? *gasp* It's Urahara isn't it? That's it right?"

"Naruto shut up and go to sleep."

"I can't sleep. Not with this question burning in my mind. Now who is it? Oh wait, I know, it's why you didn't want me to kill her. It's Soi-Fon isn't it? That's so hot. Maybe that should go into the book?"

THWACK

"…"

"Goodnight Naruto."

"…The mental image was worth it."

"Yes… Yes, I'm sure that it was."

XxX

(The Next Day)

Naruto sat on a tall rock in a seated meditative position as Yoruichi stood next to him watching Ichigo fight in an open area full of blades of all different shapes, sizes, and makes. Naruto let out a whistle, "Ichigo was right, his Zanpakutou spirit is mean. Look at all of these swords, unless he can sense which one it is it's a total pick 'em trying to find his blade." He saw Ichigo getting the better of Zangetsu until his blade shattered, forcing him to search for another, "He's getting better though. This kid's got a good fight IQ."

Yoruichi nodded, "It's a shortcut Naruto, it's going to be harder than doing it the long way. That would take 10 years. We were lucky that we got that extension when we first came to the Soul Society. It knocked us a few days back giving us this extra time to train him. Still, this isn't about improving his fighting prowess. His spiritual growth isn't improving as quickly as his combat skill."

"That's bad right?" Naruto asked, flinching slightly when he saw Ichigo get thrown into the face of a rock outcropping.

"Yes…" Yoruichi replied, slightly worried, "If Ichigo can't pull of his Bankai in 3 days it might be too dangerous for his soul to survive. I need to give it another day." She let out a sigh as Ichigo picked up a new sword and charged right back into battle with Zangetsu, "I need to do something to occupy my time."

"Want to fight again?" Naruto offered helpfully, "I'm 100% again and there's no such thing as too much preparation. We can even go light so we don't beat each other senseless, just go through the motions."

She looked over at him before looking back at Ichigo, "I really can't. I have to keep overseeing his training."

"How will he even know when he finds the right sword?" Naruto asked, seeing as how Ichigo had gone through a dozen swords in the last three minutes.

"Oh, he'll know, we'll all know." Yoruichi insisted before narrowing her eyes and looking around, "Do you feel that?" She asked, alerting Naruto to the change in her attitude, "I think someone's-."

The hidden entrance to the training ground exploded open, "Ha. You actually have to hide to do your Bankai training." From the dust of the destroyed entrance, walked Abarai Renji, holding his Zanpakutou in Shikai form.

Naruto appeared in front of Renji in a burst of wind and leaves and stood with his arms crossed, "I have no idea how you actually found us, but you can't leave now. You understand right?"

Yoruichi appeared beside Naruto and walked in front of him, keeping him from attempting anything, "Down boy." Naruto growled at being compared to a dog, "Any particular reason you're here, or should I let Naruto loose. He's been rather bored lately."

Renji walked further into the training ground, "Relax, I'm not here to fight, my problem isn't with Kurosaki anymore. I'm here to finish my own Bankai training too. I'm actually close." He turned his head towards Naruto and Yoruichi, "And you might want to inform Kurosaki of something. Rukia's execution date has been moved up. It's now tomorrow at noon."

Naruto and Yoruichi looked at each other before holding out their hands and playing a quick game of rock-paper-scissors, which Naruto lost, "Damn it… Fine, I'll go tell Boy-wonder the bad news."

* * *

Omake: Naruto Alone in the Rukongai (Day 13 of 46)

Naruto had finally made it to the 1st District on the east side of the Soul Society. He smiled as he saw the area that looked radically different from the districts he had been used to seeing. Naruto rubbed his hands together in anticipation, "Okay, time to infiltrate." Naruto sprinted over to the area designated as the Seireitei, however a massive gate dropped from the sky and almost crushed him, "What the hell? That almost hit me!"

"So there's one fool that desires to infiltrate the Seireitei. Fool." The dust kicked up from the falling gate cleared to reveal an obscenely large man with very prominent teeth, a four points mustache/ goatee combination and long black hair, spiky going down his back, "It's just one little man. Very well then, it's been a long time since anyone has tried breaking into this place. I am the guardian of the Eastern Gate of the Seireitei, Kaiwan. And I will be your executioner."

"Um… No." Naruto said, setting himself into a fighting stance, "Today, you're going to be my doorman, because I'm going to kick your ass and make you open this gate for me."

"Insolence!" Kaiwan roared at Naruto in anger, "I would die before I open this gate for you!" He ran forward at Naruto with his fist drawn back, "I'll crush you in one punch you puny bastard!"

Naruto bounced lightly on his toes and waited for Kaiwan to throw his punch. Naruto jumped over it as it smashed into the ground, breaking up the surface. He landed on the fist and swiftly ran up Kaiwan's arm before he could draw it back and kicked him right in the side of the head, sending him spilling against the gate, rattled from the surprisingly strong invader.

"Open the gate and I'll stop beating the shit out of you big man." Naruto said, tapping his foot impatiently, "I've beaten guys bigger than you and with more power. You're too slow." He heard Kaiwan growl and took that as his decision, "Okay, whatever you want." Kaiwan came at Naruto, lifting his hands overhead for a double-handed smash while Naruto made hand-seals, "Raiton: Gian (Lightning Release: False Darkness)!"

A bolt of lightning in the shape of a jagged spear shot from Naruto's mouth and hit Kaiwan in the upper right part of his chest, ripping right through his body, getting a breathless gasp from the giant before he stumbled back against the gate and slumped to the ground, "S-Such power…"

Naruto looked at Kaiwan apologetically, "Sorry. I forgot how strong that one was. Are you going to be alright? Can you open the gate?"

Kaiwan gasped for breath and glared at Naruto, "I would never open the gate and allow an intruder into the Seireitei. You'll have to kill me invader."

Naruto frowned, "But then if I kill you who's going to open the gate? Look at that thing, I can't lift that thing up." He shrugged, "Fine, I don't need you to open it. I'll just go over it." Naruto ran at the wall and tried sticking his feet to it to begin running up the side, but ended up slipping off and falling on his head, "What the hell?"

Kaiwan laughed, "There's a barrier surrounding the Seireitei keeping others from getting in easily by jumping over the gate or going under. The only way in is through the doors themselves." He continued to laugh until he passed out from his wounds.

"Oi!" Naruto shouted, jumping on the giant's shoulder and slapping him across the face, "Get up and open this gate! Hey!" He jumped off and sighed before walking back to town, "Well isn't that just great? And where the hell is everyone else!"

* * *

**Chapter complete and now I'm going to rest for the rest of the day. I need all of my energy… for crack-cocaine. I would have posted this last night but spending time with my dearest, most loyal and longstanding (as well as beautiful) lady friend comes first, and I decided to finish it now because of the UFC pay-per-view tonight that I'm all on watching because it's going to be great. Anderson Silva vs. Vitor Belfort is going to be short and violent… and badass, as well as Forrest Griffin vs. Rich Franklin which is just going to be pure awesome, and any show with Jon "Bones" Jones on it is never a fail, thus I'm in there like swimwear.**

**The reason I'm cranking these out is to get past the Soul Society part. I had to do this part because it is the single most important part in the entire Bleach storyline and I hadn't changed anything to keep it from happening, thus it happened. Once it's over I can really start doing what I want with the story.**

**Well whatever, who cares? Later peeps, Kenchi out.**


	7. Soul Society Turned Upside Down

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. If anyone brings this up to me in public I might be tempted to knock you unconscious and then force you to drink bleach. You should live though. Bleach is 40% water and we are 60% water, therefore we are bleach.

**Chapter 7: Soul Society Turned Upside Down**

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* * *

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(Five Hours Before the Execution)

The day of Rukia's execution had come too fast for any of the would-be rescuers' liking. Naruto was worried about the whereabouts of Orihime, Uryuu, and Chad, but Yoruichi told him to stay with them until the actual time of attack on the Soukyoku. This wasn't his mission and he had no true personal stake in it, so he followed Yoruichi's orders, trusting her to know the right thing to do in this instance. After all she had commissioned him to work on this with her, not the other way around.

Renji walked over to Yoruichi and Naruto who were both still watching Ichigo train with Zangetsu, still doggedly trying to find the appropriate sword for his Bankai, "So do you think that he can really pull it off and obtain his Bankai, because we're out of time here."

On the battlefield of the training ground, Ichigo was knocked aside by his Zanpakutou spirit Zangetsu once more, "Just because you're growing weaker doesn't mean I'm going to make the training any easier on you. This is all up to you Ichigo." Multiple Zangetsus stood all around Ichigo holding swords, "One more time now!"

Ichigo smirked and growled before grabbing another sword from the ground and charging right back into the fray, "Stop yapping already old man! I'm not going to give you an excuse to go easier on me!

Yoruichi pondered the answer, never taking her eyes off of Ichigo, "Ichigo needs to realize deep down that he has the ability to possess great power. However difficult it seems I believe in him, I know he can master his Bankai." She stood in silence for a moment before speaking again, "Do you remember learning to walk?"

Renji looked taken back for a moment by the question, "What? How could I possibly remember something like that?"

"If you don't consciously remember then you don't consciously know how to do it." Yoruichi's words continued to confuse Renji, "If so how are you able to still walk? It's because every person knows how to walk after they are born. Just like birds know how to fly, just like fish know how to swim, it's simple instinct. Because they instinctively know their strength they won't think twice before trying to acquire that strength when the time comes."

She continued to speak as Ichigo fought it out with the multiple forms of Zangetsu, "Seeing Ichigo's determined face reminds me of instinct. I think he knows deep down that he can do this. I believe in my heart that he was born with the ability to achieve Bankai."

Renji stood in silence as the sounds of Ichigo's struggle continued before he finally turned to leave, "Well in that case I'm off."

Naruto turned to Renji with a thoughtful look on his face, "Why are you leaving now? Why not just wait a little while and leave with us. It's got to give you a better chance. Bankai or not from what I've seen these captains are no joke."

Renji let out a laugh, "This one's personal Uzumaki. It's a goal of mine to defeat my captain, I don't see a better opportunity to take my chance than now, especially when I have a true reason to fight him."

"Want some help?" Naruto asked him with a helpful smile, "Yoruichi can watch Wonder-boy and I can go with you to keep riff-raff away, maybe even help you fight the guy. It's Byakuya isn't it?"

Renji shook his head, "No, this is something I have to do alone. I'll catch up with the rest of you by the time you're done here."

"Good luck." Naruto said honestly. Over the day that Renji had been there he had seen and heard that he truly cared for Rukia. He couldn't help but want to go with him. All of the anticipation for the inevitable conflict that was to take place was making him antsy. He hadn't felt this ready for a fight in so long he had almost forgotten what it felt like.

As Yoruichi kept her gaze set firmly on Naruto, said blonde stood up and began walking to a secluded section of the facility, "You can stay with Ichigo. I'm going to go prepare for the battle. Come get me when it's time to leave Yoruichi-chan."

XxX

(11th Division Headquarters)

Two Shinigami were busy sweeping the streets of the HQ, however one held his head as he was nursing a hangover from the previous night, "Ugh, I drank too much last night damn it."

The second Shinigami off to the side scoffed, "It's not just that dumbass. You smoke too much too. Otherwise you wouldn't be drowsy."

"Meh, shut up." The first one replied to his partner for the day, "Stop mouthing off to me just because you lost in that spar yesterday or I'll just beat the shit out of you again."

The other Shinigami threw his broom to the ground and put his hand on his Zanpakutou, "What? Draw your sword, I'll polish you off before I get to work cleaning the street!"

"Hah." The first Shinigami said, grabbing his own Zanpakutou, "'Polish?' That sounds so lame you loser. Prepare to get your ass kicked!" The two then stopped as a sound of furious charging started getting closer, "Oi, what's that sound?"

At that point, Zaraki Kenpachi flew around the corner and ran past them full speed, getting the two to freak out and get back to work quickly. Madarame Ikkaku, a bald Shinigami soon followed, running past them as well, "Idiots. You need to lay low when you're slacking off."

Ikkaku's partner, a rather effeminate man with purple jaw-length hair and feathers on his eyebrow, ran past them next, "Leave one speck of dirt and I'll kill you both."

The two watched their superiors follow Kenpachi and scratched their heads, "What the hell is going on? And I think I saw two people on the captain's back."

Kenpachi kept running, navigating the maze of the Seireitei, "And now which way do we go woman?" He asked.

Orihime appeared over one of his shoulders, "Um… it's probably-."

She was cut off by a small girl with pink hair headbutting her in the head out of the way, "It's this way!" She said pointing in a random direction, "Ken-chan thinks we should go this way too right?"

Ikkaku decided to speak up, "I think it's best if we leave it to Orihime to decide. Yachiru-fukutaichou has a helplessly bad sense of direction."

Yachiru spit a loogie on Ikkaku's head, "Shut up Marble Head!"

Yumichika tried calming Ikkaku down before he attempted to throttle the little girl, leaving Kenpachi with no answer on where to go, "Nevermind… what a nuisance. I'll decide myself on where to find Kurosaki."

XxX

Inside of a jail cell sat Uryuu, a heavily bandaged Ganju, and Chad. A butterfly suddenly drifted into the cell, catching Uryuu's attention, "Oh look, a butterfly. So cute, is it spring in Soul Society?" He wondered, in his own world at the moment.

Ganju narrowed his eyes at Uryuu through his bandages while Chad simply watched with a sweatdrop, "Mumbling to yourself about butterflies… so hopeless." He let out a sigh and spoke in his normal tone, "If you want to you can chase it around too Uryuu. I won't tell anyone about this."

Uryuu stopped paying attention to the butterfly and started sputtering, "D-Don't try to trick me, I'm not going to chase a butterfly! Don't call me by my first name either, I don't think we're that close yet!"

Ganju snapped back at him, "What? I don't think we're that close either!"

Chad simply sat patiently while the two started arguing. It was obviously because they were bored. There was nothing they could do in their cells anyway with all of the Sekkiseki abundant, keeping them from using their powers. However, Chad suddenly hushed them, "Do you hear a ruckus somewhere?"

Uryuu stopped and listened, "Actually, now that you mention it… Does it sound like it's coming closer? Wait, no. Did it stop?" All of a sudden the ceiling in the middle of the room burst open, covering the room in smoke.

However it quickly dispersed to let Ganju see a few faces he was rather familiar with, "You! You're… Holy shit it's Zaraki Kenpachi! The 11th Division captain! And the bald guy that fought Ichigo! And that self-absorbed guy with the sissy hairstyle!"

Yumichika looked at him with a tick mark on his head, "I'm sorry but do I know you? I tend to forget about people who are ugly."

Orihime suddenly popped out from behind Kenpachi's shoulder, "Ishida-kun! Ganju-kun! Sado-kun! I'm so glad you're all safe!"

All of the others looked at her in shock at seeing her there with a group of Shinigami, "Inoue-san?" Uryuu said, "What exactly is going on here?"

XxX

(Kuchiki Family Manor)

"Byakuya-sama it is almost time to head to the Soukyoku."

Byakuya quickly replied, "I see." He was looking intently at a picture of a woman that looked much like Rukia, "I'm going Hisana."

XxX

(2nd Division Headquarters)

Omaeda marched through the halls stuffing his face with a bag of chips, "This is so stupid! First these Ryoka all attack and now everyone's arguing whether or not this execution is legit… the decision's already been made! What's there to talk about? Don't you think so captain?" He asked to Soi-Fon who was walking beside him.

"What a lame thing to wonder about…" She said to her lieutenant, "I couldn't care less if it were right or wrong. All I care about are executing my orders as a captain of the Gotei 13. All who get in my way are enemies." She thought firmly to the battle she had just waged with a certain intruder of the Seireitei a few days earlier, "All enemies must be slain. That is all that matters."

Omaeda stopped eating and decided to comment, "Are you talking about that guy that got away from you before? That Uzumaki guy? Well he did make the Seireitei Communication Monthly magazine actually readable for the first time in like ever. Maybe I should get them to do the same thing for me, I'm nobility after all, I should be way more interesting than that commoner."

"Everything I said goes for you too Omaeda." Soi-Fon said coldly as she turned to look at him, "Don't forget where your loyalties lie. If you get in my way you too will be my enemy."

Omaeda wiped the crumbs from his face along with the sweat that had formed from the intent that Soi-Fon had focused on him, "Heh, I'll remember that captain."

Soi-Fon continued walking from her division's HQ to Soukyoku Hill, the site of the execution of one Kuchiki Rukia, a place she assumed she would find one maddeningly skilled blonde and use that opportunity to finish him off for good, 'I will destroy you Uzumaki Naruto. Talented Ryoka or not you are still an enemy to the Seireitei and I will not betray my superiors like my former mistress. If you show your face at this execution you and anyone else with you will die.'

XxX

(8th Division Headquarters)

A Shinigami captain with long brown hair tied in a ponytail, a pink flowered kimono over his other gear, and a straw hat lay on the roof of his HQ looking up at the sky chewing on a blade of grass. He had thin facial hair around his mouth and on his cheeks as if he missed a shave or two recently.

A woman appeared over the side of the building standing on a ladder. She had black hair that she kept pinned back and glasses that adorned her rather beautiful face, "Ah, captain there you are. Please get up and get ready to go! It's almost time."

"Nanao-chan~." The captain whined before speaking normally, "I have a few problems that I'm not sure what to do about. Care to hear about them?"

Nanao frowned but climbed the rest of the way onto the roof and sat down next to her captain, "What is it Shunsui-taichou?" She asked him.

"Well…" He said with a sigh as he began to explain, "The truth is, I was distressed and I tried to relax by chewing on this blade of grass… but I don't know if it's poisonous or not. My mouth got numb and I'm dumbfounded."

Nanao immediately ripped the offending piece of flora from his mouth, "Then throw it away!" She stood up and began walking back towards the edge of the roof.

"Nanao-chan…" He said more seriously than before, "I… What should I do?"

She turned around, rather uncomfortable about what to do, "Why are you asking me? No matter what I say on the matter you're still going to end up doing whatever you feel like in the end." She adjusted her glasses when he looked at her, listening intently on what she was saying, "Don't worry about me. I will follow you at a safe distance so that I won't get dragged into anything."

He let out small laugh, "That's bad then, because once again I'll be the only one getting scolded by Yama-jii."

XxX

(Soukyoku Hill Hideout)

Naruto sat meditating with two clones. In this state he found that he was able to bond himself with the Reishi that comprised the Soul Society so much easier than he could from the energy on earth and it utterly fascinated him and left him excited. The energy comprising the entire plane of existence in its entirety was Naruto's and Naruto's to use and draw upon freely. Due to his bond with the environment of the Soul Society he was able to easily sense the battles carrying on throughout the area, 'There must be more people then just Renji who think that think that this execution is wrong.'

He was able to locate Chad, Uryuu, Orihime, and Ganju and was relieved to find their life-force strong and well, however something had changed with Uryuu, something he couldn't properly sense at the moment. He frowned when he felt Renji's Reiryoku fade from his senses, but when he felt it slowly stabilize and begin growing again he settled down and made to stand up when the air around him was filled with an intense but familiar Reiatsu that brought a huge grin to his face and stirred him from his own personal preparations, "Alright, you guys know what to do. Stay here and keep focusing and we'll be fine. We'll get through this. I'll call you when I need you."

Walking away from his own section of the Seireitei, he saw Yoruichi looking towards the cliffside entrance of the hideout with a grin on her face, "Obviously Wonder-boy was able to pull it off. Where's he at now?"

Yoruichi turned to Naruto and began walking towards the hidden entrance, "I lent him a little something so that he could get to the scene of the execution faster. Are you ready to go?"

Naruto started cracking his knuckles with a serious look on his usually carefree whisker-marked face, "I've been ready for three days. Let's go kick some Shinigami ass already. Do we have a plan?"

"Nope." Yoruichi chirped cheerfully as they started walking towards the exit.

"So we have 3 captains already fighting… each other for some reason, our little group is still alive and well, but they're nowhere near here, and technically it's just you, me, and Ichigo against the remaining captains." He said, tightening his bandanna with his old village insignia on it around his neck, "Those sound like my kind of odds."

Yoruichi's grin grew at hearing that as she chimed in with some more facts that he had neglected to leave off of the rundown, "Let's take into account that we don't even have a concrete plan of getting out of here once we get Rukia." Naruto pointed at her in acknowledgement of her analysis getting her to giggle, "Come on. What happened to all of that swagger and bravado you walked into all of this with?"

"It hasn't gone anywhere." He defended, "I'd just like to save my gloating for after I win and we all get out of this in one piece." Both of them then felt the Reiatsu from the Soukyoku, "Alright, let's go start some trouble." Yoruichi opened the door and both of them took off with their respective speed techniques.

XxX

(Soukyoku Execution Site)

In front of a large halberd stood Captain-Commander Yamamoto who was facing Rukia, "Alright. As you have requested, by tomorrow morning the Ryoka that have infiltrated the Seireitei will be sent back safely."

Rukia smiled at him gratefully, "Really? Thank you Yamamoto-soutaicho."

Unohana Retsu's lieutenant Kotetsu Isane, a tall young woman with short grey spiky hair, of it braided on the side, frowned at what she was seeing before Rukia's execution, "How cruel. He says that even though he doesn't plan on letting any of them live."

Unohana shook her head in the negative, "That is not cruelty Isane, that is kindness. Since her end is unavoidable, at the very least this will let her pass away peacefully."

A group of masked Shinigami made their way to the execution platform around the Soukyoku prompting Yamamoto to begin the execution, "Release the seal of the Soukyoku." Ropes that were holding the giant halberd in place began loosening and snapping as a mighty flame sparked ablaze and engulfed the weapon in the shape of a phoenix. Rukia was elevated off of the ground and held in the air by support beams, "Kikouou. This is the true form of the spearhead of the Soukyoku and the executioner of the grand penalty. After it pierces a criminal's body the penalty will end.

Rukia stared down the terrifying weapon with an unwavering look, 'I'm not scared. I'm completely content with my life. From meeting Renji and the others, to being adopted by Byakuya-oniisama, Kaien-dono's guidance, and Ichigo's attempted rescue. No pain, no regrets, no sadness. There is nothing for my heart to linger in this world for. Thank you all and goodbye." She thought as tears started coming down her face.

However before the execution weapon got close, Ichigo appeared in front of Rukia, heavily bandaged and wearing a cape of sorts, "Yo." Ichigo was holding back the force of the weapon with nothing more than his Zanpakutou.

Rukia looked at him in disbelief as the phoenix was held in place by Ichigo who didn't seem to be straining at all, "I-Ichigo… You idiot! Why did you come again?" Ichigo looked at her, utterly shocked that she was angry that he had come back, "You know you can't win against my brother! You'll really get killed this time! I've already made peace with this so I don't need you to rescue me! Go back!"

Soi-Fon looked up at Ichigo and Rukia from her spot safely away from the Soukyoku in surprise, "The destructive force equivalent to one million Zanpakutous combined… he stopped it using nothing more than his lone blade. Who is that man?"

The phoenix drew away from Ichigo for another go around, "Making space for a second attack? Come on then." He said, ignoring Rukia's cries to get him to stop.

Before the two could clash again, something wrapped around the neck of the phoenix, attracting attention to the newly arrived Ukitake alongside two of his underlings. Shunsui immediately leapt to his side to assist him, "Yo handsome. You sure do like making people wait for you don't you?"

Yamamoto looked at his two captains moving to stop the Soukyoku in utter astonishment. Ukitake apologized to his fellow captain, "Sorry. Breaking the seal took longer than expected, but we can still handle this just fine."

While the main execution weapon was being handled, Ichigo stabbed his sword into the platform that was holding Rukia suspended, breaking it in half, "Stop telling me to run away, it's annoying. I told you I don't care what you say." He said as he held Rukia securely under his arm, "This is the second time I've had to save you Rukia."

"I'm not thanking you for this you idiot." She said trying to hold back her tears.

Ichigo smirked as he looked down at Byakuya, "That's fine."

Rukia looked down and felt like a burden towards the whole situation, "Let me ask you something. What do you plan to do from here? There's no way we can get out of this mess safely."

"We run." Ichigo said simply.

Rukia looked up at him with a fearful expression, "That's not possible, we're surrounded by captains! We can't run past them!"

Ichigo looked away from her in annoyance, "Then we'll beat them up before we run. What do you want from me?" His face took on a look of determination, "I'm not just here for you though. Inoue, Ishida, and Chad all came. Ganju and Hanatarou too. Everyone that helped me get this far. I'm getting them all out of here too."

Looking down they saw that someone had beaten up all of the executioners that had set off the Soukyoku, "Renji!" He looked up and grinned when he saw Rukia safe and sound, "I'm so glad you're alive Renji…" She said to herself when she found herself hoisted above Ichigo's head by her waist, "I-Ichigo, what are you doing?"

As he saw Ichigo wind up, Renji couldn't believe what he was about to see, "Oh no way… You've got to be kidding me."

"Catch!" Ichigo threw Rukia directly at Renji all the way down from where they had been beforehand, forcing Rukia to land firmly right in his stomach like a dart and send him flying back across the ground. The two got up and started yelling at Ichigo before he cut them off, "Don't just stand there, take her out of here! That's your job Renji! Don't let go of her even if it kills you!"

Renji nodded and immediately did as instructed, fleeing the site with Rukia in his grasp quickly.

As the multiple lieutenants stood watching what happened in disbelief, Soi-Fon got them all into action, "Why are you standing there like an idiot?" She yelled at Omaeda, "Go after them! That goes for you other lieutenants as well!"

They all set out to chase after Renji when Ichigo landed from his position on the execution platform in front of them. They immediately made to release the Shikai of their Zanpakutou, but before anyone could register an attack Ichigo had punched straight through Omaeda's, breaking it with one hit and taking him out of the fight. He curved around and hit the second one with an uppercut, swiftly dispatching him from the fight as well.

Isane watched how Ichigo had broken the two lieutenants with the slightest of efforts, 'Unbelievable, and he hasn't even used his Zanpakutou yet. Ichigo blurred from her sight, alerting her to danger, however he swiftly knocked her unconscious as well.

After disposing of the three lieutenants, Ichigo pulled Zangetsu up to block a sneak attack from Byakuya, bringing a feral smirk to his face, "I told you already, I can see your every move Kuchiki Byakuya!"

"Why?" Byakuya asked as the two clashed blades, "Why do you so persistently try to save Rukia?"

Ichigo pushed back harshly with an angry look on his face, "I'm the one who should be asking questions. Aren't you Rukia's older brother? Why aren't you trying to help her at all?"

Byakuya simply brushed the question off, "What a pointless question. Even if I tell you the answer to that question you wouldn't be able to understand. Continuing this empty dialogue is useless." The two pushed against one another before springing away, "It looks like there is only one way to end this. Kurosaki Ichigo I will kill you, and then I will carry out Rukia's execution with my own hands."

Ichigo narrowed his eyes, "That's not going to happen. I came here to make sure of that!" The two rushed at each other and clashed blades again.

"Nee-san!" One of Ukitake's assisting underlings, the female, Kiyone ran over to her sister, Unohana's lieutenant who had been knocked out by Ichigo.

"Wait Kiyone!" Ukitake's other underling Sentarou yelled out to her as she ran over to where Ichigo and Byakuya were fighting, "Kuchiki-taichou is fighting there! You'll get dragged in if you get close!"

Before he could reach her to stop her he felt himself get knocked out of the way harshly by Soi-Fon who appeared behind Kiyone with a look that completely lacked humor or mercy. Ukitake immediately moved to defend her, "Soi-Fon stop!" Before he could go he found Yamamoto standing in front of him.

"Don't move." The old grizzled leader said to the two captains, "The person who ran off with the criminal was a lieutenant. He can be slain and easily replaced, that matter can wait. However, I cannot forgive you for what you two have done. You are captains and yet you've done the unthinkable. You both must know yourselves of the crimes you've commited."

Shusui grabbed Ukitake from behind and grinned at Yamamoto, "I see it can't be helped then! Let's get the hell out of here Ukitake!" He held onto his friend and jumped from the side of the hill, leaving the old man behind.

"Wait Shunsui!" He said frantically, "My people are still back there!"

"Calm down." The mellow captain said to assuage his fears, "If you stay there and fight with Yama-jii we'll both be killed. Your people will be fine. Don't you sense the two other people still back there? They're on our side."

XxX

Soi-Fon stomped on Kiyone's chest and looked down at her coldly, "Scum. You betrayed the honor bestowed upon you as seated officers and you betrayed us! Don't worry however, I will not prolong your shameful existence. I will purge the world of your stench right now."

"Ara… Come on now my little bee. That isn't very nice."

Soi-Fon's head whipped around to see Naruto standing on a nearby rock formation with his arms crossed and a grave expression on his face, "Miss me?" He looked down at his chest, "Obviously you have because I still have your little love mark on me. I missed you too beautiful." He gestured towards himself, "Why don't you come on over here and we can catch up?"

"Uzumaki." Soi-Fon growled out, forgetting about Kiyone instead to glare out at him, "I thought you were a better tactical warrior than that. You could have taken that opening to attack me. Instead you're giving me the opportunity to finish what I started."

"Maybe." Naruto said admittedly, "But there are two problems with that. One, I have to let you release your Zanpakutou for you to try it. Two, I'm not the one you should be worried about. I'm just a decoy." Before Soi-Fon could attack him or question him, a blur flew at her and swept her off her feet before taking her over the edge of the cliff, leaving Naruto to himself, "And that takes care of that problem. Go Yoruichi-chan." He sensed a presence coming his way, but instead of turning to fight he let it walk right past him towards all of the wounded.

Unohana didn't look back at Naruto as she drew her Zanpakutou, "You didn't attack me."

Naruto shook his head, "There was no need. You had the drop on me and didn't attack _me_. I'm not here to fight anyone, just to help some people right a wrong." He gave her a small smile, "Besides, I was never one for trying to hurt women for no reason, hurting a beautiful woman like you would make me feel bad." He then looked down at his chest and smiled at Soi-Fon's mark having vanished, "Well Yoruichi-chan must be a bigger priority over yours truly."

Unohana gave a slight laugh, "I'm going to remove the wounded from the area. This area will need to be clear for what's about to happen."

Naruto gave her a questioning look, "Are Ichigo and Byakuya going to tear the place up that much?"

Her Zanpakutou transformed into a green, gas-like substance before turning into a giant green one-eyed manta ray. Unohana hopped onboard the creature and allowed it to swallow up all of the wounded from both Ichigo and Soi-Fon's attacks, "Not so much them…" She said cautiously.

Naruto raised an eyebrow, "Well then who-?" He let out a sweatdrop as he felt an obviously intently intense Reiatsu from quite a ways behind him, "Whoever that is, they're coming this way aren't they?"

"Unfortunately for you, yes. Minazuki go." She ordered before taking off with her Zanpakutou, "I do not think you are a bad person Uzumaki-san. I would wish you luck, but that would go against my position. By the way, I am Unohana Retsu."

Naruto gave her a small salute, "Nice to meet you Retsu-chan. Now I have to go fight for my life." He said, disappearing in a blur towards where he felt the Reiatsu from.

XxX

Naruto reappeared in front of Yamamoto who was still holding himself up with his cane, "So is there any chance of you just letting us get away with Rukia? You can't honestly say that giving a kid the power to save his family is worth getting executed over. That's so stupid."

"It came down from the Central 46 council that have their power given to them by the Spirit King." Yamamoto said resolutely to the intruder on his lands, "Once a decision is made is cannot be overturned." He narrowed his eyes at Naruto, "You've been running around stirring up quite a panic haven't you?"

Naruto settled himself into a fighting stance, "And let me guess. You're going to put a stop to it aren't you? Well come and try it Yamamoto-jiji. I'm not going to be so easy to put down."

Yamamoto let out a rather hearty laugh, "It isn't very often that I have to chase after little nuisances myself. So come little one." He noticed the look in Naruto's eyes and had to take back that previous statement, "Actually no, not so little. You have the eyes of a warrior more hardened in battle than all but around two of my captains." He lifted his cane as it transformed into his Zanpakutou, "I think that for the first time in a long time I will have to work for a victory. Draw your blade."

Naruto stood up out of his taijutsu stance, "My blade?" He quickly swung his arm out to the side as a rather long bladed rod appeared from his sleeve, "I'm not much for blade-on-blade work, but I don't think a kunai would really be enough to do the job this time." He looked at the weapon in his sleeve, "I don't really think this thing is going to hold up against yours, but we'll never know until we fight will we?"

Naruto stared Yamamoto down, neither moving until the old man drew his sword, forcing Naruto to take that time to launch at him in a preemptive strike, "Let's not dally Yamamoto-jiji! I can't even try to mess around with you, I have to come at you with full intent to maim right off the bat or you'll probably pick me apart! Rinnegan (Samsara Eye)!" Naruto's eyes changed from blue to the ripple pattern synonymous with the famed optic orbs.

He clashed weapons with Yamamoto, "I'm pleased that you would take me so seriously as to utilize such a powerful tool so soon. Soi-Fon has informed of your capabilities with this technique."

"Heh, she doesn't really know anything about it. I only used two attacks of the Rinnegan on her. One won't work on you since you already are a soul more or less, but the others are good enough!" Naruto said pushing back, 'I knew this old guy wasn't as frail as that hunched appearance made him look. Deceptive.' Naruto held strong against Yamamoto, "Is fighting really the only way we can solve this? I don't have anything against you."

"Silence boy." Yamamoto said as he continued the struggle against Naruto, "One such as you should know that there is no mercy for one that obstructs justice. Your eyes tell me of years that far exceed your appearance."

"Your justice isn't my justice." Naruto growled to him as the two pushed off of one another and stood at a standoff.

Yamamoto shook his head, "Don't speak nonsense. There is no sense of individual justice that can override global justice."

Naruto narrowed his eyes at Yamamoto and angrily swung the blade in his hand, "My ass… There is no such thing as complete justice, even from those in control. Wrongs are committed by everyone, no matter who they are or what they try to do. One man's justice is another's injustice. Arrogant. How arrogant."

"It is too late for a verbal debate." Yamamoto said as he disposed of his captain's haori and Shinigami top, revealing a heavily scarred and muscled frame underneath, "I will grace you with the Shikai of my Zanpakutou, for one dangerous enough to come out of battle with one of my captains and still be able to fight mere days later it seems appropriate."

"Fuck that." Naruto said blurring from sight to keep Yamamoto from using his Shikai. Naruto slashed at him with his blade that Yamamoto blocked, "If you think I'm just going to sit there and let you release that thing without trying to stop it you must be as senile as you look."

"No honor?" Yamamoto questioned at Naruto disdainfully.

Naruto smirked ruefully, "You can have all the honor you want, I'd rather win!" A clone seamlessly formed behind Yamamoto and launched a kick to the head that the old man blocked with his free arm, however this left an opening that Naruto used to kick Yamamoto hard in the body, getting the old man to glare and cringe at the attack before the clone ricoched a punch off of his face. The combined attack concluded with Naruto delivering a spin kick to the face that knocked Yamamoto away.

Yamamoto stopped himself from stumbling any further and took aim at Naruto and his clone, "Tricky. But how about this, Hadou #32: Oukasen (Way of Destruction #32: Yellow Fire Flash)!" Yamamoto held up his sword in front of him horizontally and generated a yellow orb of energy that expanded as it fired in a wide arc at Naruto and his clone.

Naruto jumped over it, his clone however was unable to as it met its swift end. As he hung in the air from his jump he cursed for overjumping, as Yamamoto took this time to begin unsealing his Zanpakutou, "Banshou Issai Kaijin To-!"

"Raiton: Gyakukyokusei no Jutsu (Lightning Release: Reverse Polarity)!"

A transparent ball of electricity hit Yamamoto's Zanpakutou from Naruto's hand and interrupted his Shikai command. The jutsu threw him back along the ground and the old man quickly retook his feet to see that Naruto had landed and blurred toward him. Yamamoto simply blocked Naruto's blade after he reappeared from his use of Swift Release. A slash from the man broke Naruto's blade, disrupting Naruto's balance and throwing him backwards.

Naruto threw the broken rod at Yamamoto who moved his head and dodged it, 'Fuck! If only I had time to go to my lockup and get a sword before coming here to the Soul Society! Kubikiribouchou would have been invaluable right now!'

"Bakudou #4: Hainawa (Way of Binding #4: Crawling Rope)." Yamamoto generated a crackling rope of yellow energy in his hands and released it at Naruto. He was caught off guard by the speedy incantation and wound up with his arms and body bound by the rope.

Naruto grimaced and started gathering power to break the rather weak Kidou, "You think this can hold me? I can still run away until I can break it."

"I'm sure that you can." Yamamoto admitted, "But it wasn't meant to defeat you, it was meant to keep you at bay for a moment." He held up his Zanpakutou, getting Naruto to widen his eyes at realizing what he was going to do. Naruto ran at him and tried throwing kicks at the old man, but without his hands to perform any kind of supplementary ninjutsu, not even a substitution, Yamamoto was able to knock him away with an undefended knee to the body, "Banshou Issai Kaijin To Nase, Ryuujin Jakka (Reduce All Creation to Ash, Flowing Blade-like Flame)!"

Naruto's Swift Release saved him from being instantly incinerated by Yamamoto's Shikai as flames immediately leapt from the blade and engulfed the immediate area in a firestorm of sorts with flames so intense the sky even felt the effects of the heat, "And there isn't even a drop of water for miles." Naruto muttered to himself as the flames surrounding Yamamoto whipped about wildly. Naruto slapped himself several times and shrugged his shoulders, "Fine. Bring it on Yamamoto-jiji!"

The old warrior began walking through his own flames towards Naruto, "Is that it? No matter how powerful you are you won't be able to defeat my Shikai with that amount of power. What Soi-Fon had to report about your attacks shows that the skills you showed her won't be enough to defeat me."

Naruto had his head down as the sweat from the heat of the attack started forming on his forehead. The binding ropes then broke from Naruto's frame, allowing him to take his jacket off and throw it to the side. His little weapons wouldn't do any good here, the element of surprise was gone, "You're going to find out the hard way that giving me chances is the last thing that you want to do." Naruto looked up at Yamamoto with his toad-like eyes with yellow irises and horizontal bar like pupils to go with his Rinnegan. An orange pigment marked the outside of his eyes, "Because the first opening you give me could be your last... captain-commander or not."

Yamamoto looked at Naruto in interest as his Reiryoku skyrocketed and he blasted the area in a stream of Reiatsu intense enough to begin blowing the flames away from him with a powerful wind that cut through the fire, "You're strong enough to resist my Shikai's release without being turned to ashes. This battle will be worthwhile after all. What are you?"

Naruto rolled his unique looking eyes amid the clash of powerful spiritual energies, "I've told you people again and again, word should have spread, I'm a sage. If I end up kicking your ass will you finally get the point and remember?"

XxX

Having expected Yamamoto to follow them away from the cliff, Shunsui and Ukitake were surprised when the release of their overall leader's Zanpakutou filled the sky and atmosphere, "Oh man…" Shunsui muttered, "Poor Ryoka… Yama-jii is going to burn that guy alive." He sighed, "You know we've got to go back and bail him out right?" He said to Ukitake.

"It would be the right thing to do… you're right." Ukitake said, "Maybe between the three of us simultaneously we can-." He was cut off when a power that he could swear came close to matching the brute force of Ryuujin Jakka erupted from the same place, forcing him into a coughing fit, 'Whoever is fighting Yamamoto-sama is powerful! He could be just as strong as both me and Shunsui when we release our Shikai simultaneously.'

Shunsui let out an impressed laugh, "Well shall we go back up our new part-time comrade, whomever he may be?" The laid-back captain took off towards the site of the battle.

XxX

(Yoruichi vs. Soi-Fon)

The two clashed repeatedly atop the trees amid a flurry of disciplined punches and kicks before breaking off and staring one another down. Soi-Fon, clothing at the time was her operational outfit. It had no sleeves and did not cover her back, it also had a slit in the outside of both thighs to her waist where it was tied by a yellow obi, leaving that part visible underneath. Above her long black armbands that extended past the elbow, she had a rather nasty bruise on her shoulder from the current fighting, "One hit. You got me once. It looks like that last exchange ended in a draw Yoruichi!"

"Apparently." Yoruichi said as she wiped some blood from her lip, "That outfit of yours, what kind of tricks does it do? It seems to prevent me from seeing your movements."

"Tricks?" Soi-Fon repeated with an amused smirk. She suddenly blurred out of sight and reappeared behind Yoruichi with her Zanpakutou drawn and to her neck, "Is that really what you think? Jinteki Shakusetsu, Suzumebachi (Sting All Enemies to Death, Hornet)!" Her Shikai activated as she held her bladed gauntlet at Yoruichi's neck.

Yoruichi tried to rapidly escape Soi-Fon's grasp with Shunpo, but Soi-Fon matched her and landed an attack that cut her across the front before she was able to get away at a safe distance from her former underling.

Soi-Fon watched Yoruichi land on a tree branch, crouched and holding her torso, "Why don't you just admit that I'm stronger than you? Does it not occur to you that I'm holding back? You're probably saying, 'There's no way she would do that!' Is that what you're thinking? I already told you not to be so full of yourself. I have long since become stronger than you." She glared right at Yoruichi, "And now with your death I will make you pay the price of staying away from battle for 100 years!" A smirk returned to her face, "You remember Suzumebachi's special ability don't you? I already got you once."

Over the area of Yoruichi's wound formed the same butterfly mark that was left on Naruto during his fight with Soi-Fon, 'Fuck! Well at least it's probably off of Naruto by now. He'd better thank me for this. I should have made him fight her again just to be mean.' She then felt the Reiatsu coming off of Yamamoto's Shikai from the spot she left Naruto, 'Actually nevermind, I think it would have been nicer of me to make him fight Soi-Fon.'

"Here's the second hit Yoruichi!" While Yoruichi had thought about Naruto fighting Yamamoto, in the split second she did so it gave Soi-Fon an opening to use Shunpo and get behind her for another attack. The attack missed the intended mark however and allowed Yoruichi to begin fleeing the area from her dogged opponent, "You turned your back to focus on escaping and yet look at yourself!"

In Yoruichi's evasive action she managed to get slashed on the arm in addition to the one on her torso, giving Soi-Fon two spots to target instead of one. Soi-Fon laughed at Yoruichi's strategy, "Running is useless! My old limit was 30 minutes, now it's as long as my will to hold the seal stays!"

'I know that. The one you had on Naruto lasted at least three days.' Yoruichi thought to herself, 'I'm not really running either.' She came to a sudden stop and swung her leg out at Soi-Fon, launching a knife at her from her boot. Soi-Fon's gauntlet easily blocked it, but Yoruichi used it as an opportunity to drop an axe kick, however Soi-Fon countered it with a rising kick of her own that got the two tangled. They disengaged before hitting the ground, but the close-range scuffle left Yoruichi with a cut on her cheek that quickly formed into another of Soi-Fon's seals.

Soi-Fon smirked at having Yoruichi on the ropes so thoroughly, "If you finally understand that I'm the stronger of us I'll do the honors of ending this." Intense pressurized Reiryoku that wasn't quite visible, yet still had effect on the environment flew off of her from Soi-Fon's back, surprising Yoruichi at the sight of it, "This must be your first time seeing something like this. This is a technique that combines Hakuda combat and Kidou, something I've recently invented. You should feel honored, I didn't even feel this was appropriate to use on Uzumaki in our fight… that was my mistake. Since the completion of this technique you're the only one I've used it on, I don't even have a name for it yet-."

"No." Yoruichi cut her off, "It has a name." Soi-Fon narrowed her eyes at how Yoruichi still didn't seem shaken by what was happening, "It's called Shunkou (Flash Cry)." She lifted one arm out to the side fully extended.

Soi-Fon looked at her in shock, "What are you talking about?" How could it have had a name, she wondered. She had just invented it herself not too long ago.

"Do you know why the Onmitsukidou head uniform has no sleeves or back?" Yoruichi asked as she clinched her fist, causing her power to pressurize much like Soi-Fon's did, only hers was fully visible. "Because the final form of this technique starts by focusing a huge amount of concentrated energy, then through a concentrated explosion that energy is instilled in the user's arms and legs to enhance them for battle. It blows the clothing on the back and shoulders to bits." Just as she said that, the powerful force she spoke of shredded her clothing, leaving only the portion of her clothes that she specified.

Yoruichi started walking calmly towards Soi-Fon flexing her arms out, "You know, I wasn't planning to use this against you." She held her arm up at Soi-Fon palm out, "Be careful Soi-Fon because..." She fired off an intense blast that caused a massive explosion, the scope of which caused her to chuckle and put a smirk on her face, as well as served the purpose of somewhat unnerving Soi-Fon, "…I can't control it perfectly yet myself."

The space between Soi-Fon and Yoruichi was marred by a massive trench, carved out by Yoruichi's show of force. The landscape on both sides of them was thoroughly cleared. Soi-Fon stood on a little island of untouched land that her opponent had intentionally left.

Yoruichi looked at her lazily, "I never showed you this technique because it's way too dangerous."

"This isn't possible!" Soi-Fon attacked Yoruichi again but all in vain.

"That's enough." Yoruichi simply stopped Soi-Fon's hand and held it in place effortlessly, "It's still too early for you to use this technique, yours is imperfect."

'Hanki (Reverse Demon).' Soi-Fon thought to herself as she couldn't channel anymore power and froze her in place, 'Using an amount of energy equal to an opponent's Kidou to cancel out the opponent's attack. She countered the force of my punch in a split second.' She dropped to her knees, "How can this be? I'm stronger than you!" She got back up and began attacking Yoruichi fruitlessly as her every attack was effortlessly defended, "I should have surpassed you already! You should have gotten weaker and I should have grown in strength! Why is this happening? Why are you still above me? Why are you still so much stronger?"

"I was so disappointed in you! I hated you! I cursed you! I swore to arrest you with my own hands, to gain strength and surpass you!" She kept attacking Yoruichi who listened to her and let her vent her frustrations, "I will never forgive you Yoruichi! You betrayed my trust and respect, I can't forgive you! I-!" She stopped raving as Yoruichi launched a single finishing punch at her, but stopped short of ending the fight. Tears came to Soi-Fon's eyes, "Why… Why didn't you take me with you Yoruichi-sama?" Soi-Fon collapsed to the ground in front of Yoruichi and began to cry.

XxX

(Ichigo vs. Byakuya)

Ichigo smashed his Zanpakutou into Byakuya's again, causing the ground to crack from the force of the attack. The two then immediately jumped back. Byakuya took note of Ichigo's speed, "Interesting. You were also able to master Shunpo as well, however-."

"You're really taking it easy aren't you?" Ichigo said, "You've been casually analyzing my strength, is that really such a good idea? Aren't you going to come and attack me?" He let out a laugh, "You haven't scratched me once this time. This can't be the best you can do." His face turned gravely serious, "So hurry up and use Bankai already. You said that you were going to kill me and then execute Rukia with your own hands."

"So?" Byakuya queried at Ichigo's displeasure.

"I don't like it!" Ichigo yelled at him, "I'm going to use everything I have to beat you, I'll keep coming at you until you have no strength left! Executing your own sister with your own two hands… What a sick joke! No matter what reason you have, no matter the circumstance… Don't ever say that in front of Rukia again. So use your Bankai and I'll break it in front of you."

"What a shallow taunt you brat." Byakuya said, narrowing his eyes at Ichigo, "No matter what you say I will not change my mind about Rukia's fate, or yours. You want me to use Bankai? Don't forget your place, it is still 1000 years too early for you to be worthy enough of dying by my Bankai. Chire, Senbonzakura (Scatter, Senbonzakura)."

As Byakuya's sword dispersed in its usual manner, Ichigo's eyes were able to hone in on the small blade and he quickly unleashed a highly condensed blast of power from the tip of his sword that cut through Byakuya's attempted attack and cut through the ground.

"Interesting…" The aristocratic captain uttered, "Is that the special ability of your Zanpakutou Kurosaki Ichigo?"

"Yep." He said with a smirk, "I've never been able to perform an aimed shot before today. I don't even know how I made it happen until I trained with Zangetsu. Getsuga Tenshou (Moon Fang Heaven-Piercer)." He stabbed his blade into the ground, "I'll say it again, fight me with your Bankai and I'll definitely win!"

"What an arrogant attack name." Byakuya taunted dryly, "So be it. Since you so strongly desire my Bankai, witness it with your eyes and remember well." He turned his sword upside down and dropped it, "Don't worry, you won't regret it. Before you can do that you'll most certainly be rendered to dust in front of me." The sword descended into the ground as energy rippled out from around it and turned the sky dark. Two rows of 1000 giant blades came up from the ground around himself and Ichigo, "Bankai. Senbonzakura Kageyoshi (Vibrant Display of a Thousand Cherry Blossoms)."

The blades then scattered into an impossible to count number of blossom-looking tiny blades. Ichigo pulled his sword from the ground and jumped into the air to avoid a quick rush of the blades before directing himself at Byakuya to attack, "How naïve." Byakuya commented before a torrent of the blossoms attacked Ichigo from above and slammed him into the ground, "The strength of Senbonzakura lies in its ability to attack with countless blades from all directions. Your Zanpakutou's strength is great, however it is impossible to dodge using such slow technique."

Ichigo pulled himself up, wounded from countless cuts on his body from Byakuya's attack, "I thought I had it damn it. I guess not though… it's only logical that by using my initial release it's impossible to beat Bankai. I underestimated you like an idiot."

Byakuya glared at him dangerously, "Be careful in your choice of words brat. You make it sound as if you've acquired Bankai."

A laugh escaped Ichigo, "Yeah, that's exactly what I was implying Kuchiki Byakuya."

"What did you say?" Byakuya asked with tone of underlying threat.

"Responding to a question with a question?" Ichigo taunted, "I know you heard me. You believe me don't you? It doesn't matter if I say it 2 or 3 times… if you don't believe my words, I'll show your eyes Byakuya! Watch carefully, this is my Bankai!" Ichigo held out his sword in front of his body as his Reiatsu stared emitting treacherously, tearing up the landscape abound and shrouding him from view.

When the dust cleared, Ichigo stood in a long, ankle-length black coat closed at his chest with a jagged bottom. His sword itself was now thinner, the design of a daitou with a jet-black blade, "Tensa Zangetsu (Heaven Chain Slaying Moon)." He said, looking back over his shoulder at Byakuya.

XxX

(Naruto vs. Yamamoto)

'It's just my luck of course.' Naruto thought to himself as he found himself outrunning the flames from Yamamoto's Zanpakutou. His flames were strong. Naruto couldn't get past the obscene amount of flames to attack the captain-commander directly, his wind would just make the fires worse, 'And of course there's no source of water for me to use a strong enough water jutsu with. It's so dry here that I couldn't pull enough moisture from the atmosphere to make a raindrop.'

"You're quite the elusive one when you want to be Uzumaki." Yamamoto said as he continued to direct his flames at Naruto, trying to cut him off of corral him towards the side of the cliff.

Naruto's Sage Mode enhanced Swift Release speed allowed him to aptly dodge the flames of Ryuujin Jakka and scurry up the side of the Soukyoku execution platform with simply raw speed and momentum. From the view given to him up high, Naruto could see that he was cornered and the entire battlefield was covered in flames, "Fantastic…" He muttered to himself sarcastically, "Don't make me do this Yamamoto-jiji! This is really going to fuck you up if I do! You aren't dodging this!"

The flames continued to shift about wildly and began climbing the pillar to reach Naruto. If he jumped down he would be jumping right into fire, if he stayed up top he would be more or less burned at the stake. "You have nowhere to go." Yamamoto declared to Naruto loudly, "Surrender and accept your demise gracefully."

Naruto started making hand-seals, "Tell you what. You can take that flaming sword, and shove it up your ass, I don't quit." He took a deep breath and punched himself in the stomach hard, "Fuuton: Renkuudan (Wind Release: Drilling Air Bullet)!" Naruto fired off highly compressed ball of air from his mouth, strong enough to form a shockwave around his mouth when he let it go.

The ball flew towards Yamamoto, blowing his flames out of its path and neutralizing his Zanpakutou's Shikai instant effect, "I see… Bakudou #81: Danku (Way of Binding #81: Splitting Void)!" A translucent barrier in the form of a rectangular wall formed in front of Yamamoto just as Naruto's volatile attack hit, exploding on contact. As the smoke cleared, the ground in front of the barrier had a crater 75 meters (246 feet) in circumference, "A strong Kidou, but still not strong enough to break my Bakudou. Maybe on one of the normal captains that would have hit-." His taunt died in his throat when he felt an incredible focalized point of Reiryoku coming from where Naruto had been standing on the Soukyoku.

Two clones stood next to Naruto generating power as the original stood with his hand outstretched overhead, holding a large shuriken of raw energy over his head with a solid orb in the center. It let off a loud bell-like screech. The power of the jutsu began either sucking away of blowing down the flames crawling up after him, "Not a Kidou… it's Ninjutsu… my Ninjutsu. Fuuton: Rasenshuriken (Wind Release: Spiraling Shuriken)!"

Yamamoto's usually half-lidded gaze snapped wide-open as he felt the strength of the attack in Naruto's hand and immediately began readying a counter, sensing that letting it come at him would end with nothing short of his own complete eradication, "Limit of the thousands hands, respectful hands, unable to touch the darkness. Shooting hands unable to reflect the blue sky. The road that basks in light, the wind that ignited the embers, time that gathers when both are together, there is no need to be hesitant, obey my orders. Light bullets, eight bodies, nine items, book of heaven, diseased treasure, great wheel, grey fortress tower. Aim far away, scatter brightly and cleanly when fired. Hadou #91: Senjuu Kouten Taihou (Way of Destruction #91: Thousand-Hand Bright Heaven Cutting-Sear)!"

Ten large pink energy beams formed around Yamamoto, aimed right at Naruto. On the other hand, Naruto narrowed his eyes at the attack Yamamoto was forming and grit his teeth to brace himself, "Neither of us are dodging either of these… So let's crash 'em and see who stands up Yamamoto-jiji!" With one last cry of exertion, Naruto let the Rasenshuriken rip towards Yamamoto.

Just before Naruto threw the Rasenshuriken, Yamamoto fired his own attack. The beams formed one large one and plowed into Naruto's Rasenshuriken which expanded widely on impact, with the resulting explosion obliterating what hadn't been destroyed earlier of the Soukyoku and making an utter wreck of everything within 3 kilometers of the epicenter.

XxX

(10 Minutes Before – Ichigo vs. Byakuya)

"What is that thing?" Byakuya asked rhetorically at the appearance of Ichigo's Bankai, "That small blade is his Bankai? Isn't that just the normal sealed form of your Zanpakutou?" He narrowed his eyes, "I see. With the execution of your 'Bankai' it appears you enjoy stepping on our pride. Then I will elicit the penalty for such!"

Byakuya moved his arms to initiate another attack with his own Bankai when Ichigo suddenly appeared right in his face, his blade on Byakuya's neck, "If that 'pride' has anything to do with Rukia's execution then you're damn right I'm going to step on it. That's the whole reason I obtained Bankai." Ichigo then flashed back to his original place.

'I never saw him move.' Byakuya thought to himself, "Why did you move your blade from my neck? Was it to show your confidence? Arrogance is often the undoing of a victory. I'll say it again; that thing you are holding cannot be Bankai. It is impossible for something so small to be Bankai and it is impossible for one like you to obtain Bankai." Ichigo narrowed his eyes in annoyance at Byakuya, "You'll regret not opening my throat when you had the chance. Miracles only happen once."

With that, Byakuya commenced his attack with a storm of blossoms but found that Ichigo's movements were so impossibly fast his attack couldn't keep up. No matter how he directed his Zanpakutou ability at Ichigo he seemed to be running circles around him. Ichigo cut at Byakuya only for Senbonzakura Kageyoshi to protect Byakuya by blocking his attack. The orange-haired hero then broke off again and began moving so fast it seemed as if he were leaving multiple afterimages, "What's wrong?" Ichigo taunted, "Too fast for you? Did you know I can go even faster?"

"Don't get cocky brat!" Byakuya began moving his hands to direct his attack actively, "I can use my hands to increase the speed as well!"

His attack closed in on Ichigo only for the Substitute Shinigami to dice up the attack and keep himself unharmed. As Byakuya looked on in shock, Ichigo got a verbal shot in on him, "Earlier you said that miracles only happen once." He vanished from Byakuya's sight and reappeared behind him, "Well what would you call it this time?"

However, Byakuya grabbed the blade in his hand, taking the damage to analyze the attack, "I see, you take all of the power of your Bankai and compress it into a small condensed form. You then use the power granted to you to perform hyper speed combat. Very well then… This power of yours, I will eradicate it!"

Ichigo swiftly freed the blade from Byakuya's grip and got some distance away from Byakuya, "Kurosaki, watch carefully. This is it. The form that forgoes all defenses and focuses solely on the destruction of the enemy. Senbonzakura's true form."

"Senkei, Senbonzakura Kageyoshi, (Annihilate, Vibrant Display of a Thousand Cherry Blossoms)." The blood from Byakuya's wound glowed and turned to energy that mixed with his Bankai blades, forming into complete glowing swords that formed four floating rows that circled all around Ichigo and himself in the form of a column. Seeing the look of fear on Ichigo's face decided to assuage some of it, "Don't worry. These thousand swords will not strike you all at once. I swore that this Senkei would only be shown to the person I wished to slay personally!" One of the swords drifted into his hand and took the form of his usual, sealed Zanpakutou, "You are the second person to ever see this." He said as he took one of the swords as it formed the appearance of his unsealed Zanpakutou.

Ichigo smirked at Byakuya, "Thanks for the compliment." The two then began to clash blades once more repeatedly. The two traded damage back and forth, the blood from their wounds staining the ground, rocks, and even the elevated swords forming Byakuya's technique. Ichigo however was steadily taking more damage from Byakuya as time dragged on.

The two clashed again when Byakuya decided to comment, "Your moves have become sluggish Kurosaki Ichigo ."

"Really?" Ichigo cracked back, "From how I see it, your sword is moving so slowly it's like you're not even moving."

In reply to the cheeky young warrior, Byakuya drove his sword through Ichigo's foot before placing two fingers against Ichigo's shoulder, "Hadou #4: Byakurai (Way of Destruction #4: White Lightning)!" A burst of lightning fired from his fingertips through Ichigo's shoulder, allowing Byakuya to free his blade and allow Ichigo to slump to his knees, "This is your limit." He noticed Ichigo sneer up at him and continued to speak, "Did you think my speed increased after Senkei? No, Senkei increased the killing power of my attacks, it does not affect my speed."

Ichigo let out a growl as he realized what was being implied, "I'm the one who got slower…"

"You did good coming this far." Byakuya said to the downed Ichigo, "You survived battle with a captain, and then after sustaining damage from Senbonzakura you were able to keep going. But you must feel it by now, no matter how hard you push your body won't move. It's over." He said as he lifted his sword overhead.

As the blade descended to end his life, Ichigo's hand shot out and stopped its descent, **"Idiot… I told you if you die then I suffer too."**

Byakuya recoiled in shock as Ichigo rose up, still holding his sword in his grasp, "How is this possible? Who are you?"

"**Who am I?"** Ichigo said manically, keeping his head low to reveal nothing more than a feral grin, **"I'm nobody! You ask me who I am, but I have no name!"** He slashed Byakuya across the chest, cackling wildly at the blood that sprayed through the air while Byakuya stumbled backwards, **"You're really worthless after all Ichigo! Just being in his Bankai's Reiatsu made your bones shake like crazy! You're such a disgrace! Watch carefully, and I'll show you how to use Bankai correctly!"**

Ichigo let off a slash of his sword that let loose a black wave of energy, **"****Kuroi Getsuga (Black Moon Fang)****!"**

Byakuya was forced to block the attack, winding up with him taking multiple wounds all over his body from the resulting explosion, "This Reiatsu, and that mask. Are you a Hollow?"

The mask on Ichigo's face continued to expand across his face as he laughed at Byakuya's wounds, this Ichigo was seemingly able to ignore his multiple wounds previously suffered to keep coming at Byakuya full force, **"Hah! You don't need to know that because soon you'll-!"** His hand suddenly reached up and began peeling the mask from his own face, **Gah! Damn it let go!"**

'Don't get in the way! Leave!'

"**You're the one getting in the way!"** The Hollow Ichigo roared back savagely, **"Just let me keep fighting and we'll win, don't you see? You damned idiot!"** Ichigo finally ripped the mask off of his face and breathed heavily in exhaustion, "Phew… sorry about that. My inner demon got in the way." He held his sword up in front of him with a smirk, "Come on. Let's start again from the beginning."

'I see.' Byakuya thought to himself, 'Fighting like that no matter what injury you wound up dealing me was never your true intention was it?' Byakuya held his own sword at the ready, "Very well… I'll disregard what happened earlier. Neither of us has the strength to keep this up any longer. Therefore let us end this with the next blow."

"Fine." Ichigo agreed before speaking again, "Wait, let me ask you something. Why don't you try to save Rukia?"

Byakuya closed his eyes, "If you defeat me I'll answer that question." Ichigo smirked in response, "Shuukei: Hakuteiken (Endscape: White Emperor Sword)." All of the swords surrounding the two made their way into a single powerful sword focusing all of Byakuya's power. The white aura took the form of a bird, forming wings of energy on Byakuya's back and surrounding his body with a halo.

"Amazing." Ichigo eagerly admitted, "Zangetsu hasn't taught me awesome tricks like that. I only have the Getsuga Tenshou, so the best I can do is to put all of my strength into one hit… so here I go." A jagged black aura started emerging from Ichigo's sword as he charged in, "Kuchiki Byakuya!"

The two powerful Shinigami clashed against one another in a clash of power that could be seen from around the Seireitei. Amid the dust stirred from the attack, the two stood post-attack having passed one another, still as statues until a vicious wound opened up from Ichigo's back, 'No! I can't fall now!'

As he thought this the same thing happened to Byakuya, only all across his front as he stumbled ahead, "You wanted to know the reason for my support of Rukia's death." He started talking, surprising Ichigo as he remembered the terms of Byakuya speaking on this, "One who commits a crime must suffer the consequences. If one is sentenced to death, the execution must take place. Those are the rules."

"Even if she's your own sister?" Ichigo choked out painfully and angrily.

"Are you referring to some sort of sibling bond?" He wondered as Ichigo turned to face his back, "What a foolish notion. In light of the rules all personal feelings have no value. And something as useless as emotions… I never had them to begin with." He turned his head to face Ichigo, face covered in blood, "The Kuchiki Clan is one of the Four Noble Families. We are role models for all Shinigami. If we do not obey the rules who will?"

Ichigo looked at him thoughtfully and took in his words, "Sorry but I still don't get it. If I were you I would definitely fight the rules."

'I see.' Byakuya was coming to understand this strange boy more and more as their battle grew more intense and he could finally answer his earliest question of why Ichigo was fighting, 'I was never the one he was fighting. From the beginning he was fighting the rules of the Soul Society. He is the same as that infuriatingly liberal man.' He took a breath, "Your will has shattered my blade Kurosaki Ichigo. Therefore I can no longer pursue Rukia. The victor of this battle is you."

Ichigo stood in silent reflection of what was just said for a moment, "I won?" A grin finally crossed his face, "I won! Holy shit I won!" He exclaimed to the sky loudly before falling backwards, "Ah, fuck… I can't stand." He fell backwards right into Orihime, smashing into the back of her head where he fell to the ground, holding his head.

"S-Sorry Kurosaki-kun are you okay?" She asked apologetically, "My head is as hard as a rock, sorry! I tried catching you but-."

Ichigo finally realized who it was that was there with him, "Inoue?" He looked past her and saw the others, "Chad? Uryuu? Ganju? … And some other guy?" The other guy waved himself off as unimportant, "I'm so glad everyone's alright."

Uryuu tilted the glasses on his face, "We're not unharmed per se, but compared to you our injuries are insubstantial."

Ichigo looked over to Orihime who began waving her hands frantically, "I'm completely fine Kurosaki-kun! Even though I was completely useless, Ishida-kun and Shinigami-san protected me! And Zaraki-san carried me! So I was never in any danger at all…" She then calmed down, "But you, I'm so sorry Kurosaki-kun that I wasn't able to help you. So thank you for staying alive. I'm so glad that you're okay."

Ichigo looked straight up at the sky and let out a laugh, "Thanks Inoue."

XxX

(With Naruto)

"Ow…" Naruto, covered in minute singes and scratch marks, mumbled to himself as he found himself thrown from the cliff that he and Yamamoto were fighting on to the ground below, "Thank you Sage Mode. Otherwise that would have hurt like hell…" Naruto stood up and looked around, "Okay. Now do I have enough time to climb up there and call it my win or what?"

"I don't think you do Uzumaki."

Naruto turned around and suddenly saw Yamamoto standing there, holding his Zanpakutou in its sealed cane form, "Damn it! How the hell did you get over here so fast? I just got up! That really hurt!"

Yamamoto jerked his head in the direction he came from, "Well you fell off of the cliff because you had the brilliant idea to stand on top of the Soukyoku when our attacks hit. I didn't, I was on the ground."

Naruto let off a sweatdrop, "Okay, I'll accept that." He set himself back into a fighting stance, "Now let's finish this. That didn't even hurt and I didn't even use that much chakra."

"So then why were you moaning ouch just a moment ago?" Yamamoto asked him.

"Because I bit my tongue when I landed." Naruto said with a deadpan face, "Do you really care? Let's fight already!"

"Hold that thought." Before Naruto and Yamamoto could continue fighting, Shunsui and Ukitake appeared in front of Naruto with their Zanpakutou drawn and at the ready at Yamamoto, "I can't let you keep trying to kill the kid Yama-jii."

"'Kid' my ass-crack!" Naruto shouted at Shunsui, "And where were you two when all of this started? We could have beaten his ass by now if you two had shown up sooner!"

Shunsui turned to Naruto and rubbed the back of his head sheepishly, "We expected him to chase us away from the Soukyoku. We didn't know he'd think you were more important to fight than us."

"On the other hand…" Ukitake pondered, "I do have that illness so I couldn't go that far that fast, and we're his students so he probably figured he could have gotten to us at any time while this Uzumaki was the one that had run roughshod over the Seireitei and hadn't be captured."

Shrugging, Shunsui turned back to Yamamoto, "Either way, we've got your back. Something stinks about this whole thing and I don't like it one bit."

Yamamoto leered angrily at Ukitake and Shunsui, "And you two are willing to go all the way with your betrayal and take up arms against me?"

Ukitake tried to salvage the remains of the situation, "We are not betraying you Yamamoto-sama. Rukia is my responsibility and this is wrong. I must defend her from an injustice like this."

Before they could begin the battle anew a message flashed through all of their heads, _"Binding successful! Captains, lieutenants, and temporary lieutenants of the Gotei 13, as well as the Ryoka. This is Lieutenant Kotetsu Isane of the 4__th__ Division speaking. Please listen carefully. Can everyone hear me? An emergency situation has occurred. This emergency transmission is under the authority of Captain Unohana Retsu of the 4__th__ Division and myself. Everything I'm about to say is absolutely true."_

The message caused everyone to narrow their eyes and look back up at Soukyoku Hill. Naruto snapped his fingers and shouted his current opinion, "Yes! I knew that damn sword in the wall was suspicious as hell!"

Shunsui sighed, "This is probably not the best time to be doing this Yama-jii." The three captains sped off towards the Soukyoku the long way with Shunpo.

Naruto watched them leave and looked up at the summit of the hill where he scoffed, "Like hell I'm running around and taking the long way. I'm taking the shortcut." Looking up he growled to himself, "This is going to suck… climbing halfway up pissed me off, now I have to go the whole way?" He ran at the cliff-face with a war-cry and latched on, digging his Sage Mode enhanced fingers into the rock to begin climbing swiftly.

XxX

(Soukyoku Hill)

"You always were the most troublesome one of the bunch Abarai-kun." Aizen said calmly as he easily broke Renji's Shikai and wounded him deeply, "I knew from the second I met you, Kira-kun, and Hinamori-kun that I could use you three. Thus when you all graduated I had you put in the 5th Division. The other more useful two became my and Gin's direct subordinates, and as for you, the problematic one, I kicked you to another division immediately. And my instincts were correct. Now for the last time; put Kuchiki down and move away."

"I refuse!" Renji roared at the rogue captain.

Rukia tried to convince him to let her go, "Renji, just-."

"I told you to be quiet Rukia!" He grinned at Aizen, "You can't have her you bastard…"

Aizen lifted his sword up, "How unfortunate."

His slash meant to finish Renji off was blocked by Ichigo in Bankai, "Why are you on the ground Renji? Is Rukia that heavy? I'm here to help."

Renji looked away, "Ichigo, sorry you had to come and save-."

Ichigo cut him off jokingly, "You look pretty beat up considering that you were only carrying Rukia around. Was the load _that _heavy for you to run with?" The two began to argue before settling down and taking note of the situation, "So that's Aizen. Can you still fight, because we won't be able to outrun all three of them?" He said, noting that Ichimaru Gin and Tousen Kaname were behind him watching.

Renji nodded, "Zabimaru's broken form still has its uses."

"Then let's get this started." Ichigo said, looking at Aizen menacingly.

Renji held his sword up for a particular technique, "I can only do this once, but it will definitely make an opening. Against a captain like him you can only hope for a small advantage, you'll have to move fast. Higa Zekkou (Bite of a Broken Baboon's Fang)!" The pieces of his broken Shikai levitated in the air around Aizen and attacked him. The attack kicked up dust from the damage, but gave Ichigo an opening to rush in and attack.

However, when he got close enough to attack, Aizen stopped his attack with one finger and slashed Ichigo across the belly, "Huh… it appears my swing was too shallow. I meant to cut off everything below the waist." Aizen then vanished and reappeared behind Renji, having already cut him down as well, leaving him alone with Rukia, "Stand up Kuchiki Rukia." When she couldn't stand he shook his head, "Of course. My Reiatsu is making it hard for you to stand." He grabbed her by her prisoner's collar and began to drag her along.

Looking over at Ichigo who was still conscious he taunted the downed Ichigo, "You must really hate the fact that your strength doesn't equal the level of your vitality, though it would be best to cease with that recklessness. Right now your spine is the only thing holding your body together. Getting up would destroy your body. Just lay there quietly until you pass on. Your mission is over." Ichigo looked at him in shock, "Everything you've done so far since your first steps trying to enter the Seireitei were all directed by me, you made things quite easy to make our moves."

He shook his head at Ichigo, "You don't even know why Urahara Kisuke really sent you here do you? He sent you here for the one thing that can help a Shinigami break their most concrete boundaries. Urahara Kisuke created a substance that reacts beyond the physics of the Soul Society. Something that can easily dissolve the barrier between Shinigami and Hollow. The Hougyoku (Crumbling Sphere). He tried to destroy it due to its danger, but he could only do one thing. He placed a barrier around it and placed it within the depths of a person's soul. If you haven't figured it out yet, the place he hid it in was inside Kuchiki Rukia."

Aizen pointed at her, "Eventually you would have lost all of your Reiryoku and become human to hide his device. He was never helping you." He took amusement in the look on her face, "You look troubled-."

Before he could continue his explanation, a large captain with a wolf's head burst into the area and attacked Aizen, "For your lies and betrayal of all of us I will give you no mercy!" He noticed Kaname behind him, "And you Tousen, do you have anything to say?" The man remained silent, "Nothing at all? How disappointing… Bankai!"

Before he could gather the energy necessary to activate his Bankai, Aizen appeared in front of him, "Hadou #90: Kurohitsugi (Way of Destruction #90: Black Coffin). Goodbye Komamura." A black box of energy surrounded Komamura as a mass of energy spears penetrated the box, piercing Komamura and swiftly defeating him, "Spells that high in number are truly more difficult to handle. That attack was not as strong as it should have been with the incantation. Now where was I?" Aizen turned his attention back to Rukia.

"Oh yes…" He said, getting back on track, "After I discovered you in the human world I murdered the Central 46 and used my Zanpakutou's ability to hypnotize others into thinking all was well. I have been there ever since I faked my death. The Soukyoku execution method to extract the Hougyoku failed so I must use the secondary way." His arm took on a strange form and impaled Rukia through the chest where he pulled out a tiny ball covered in a crystal looking barrier, "It's so small." He looked down at Rukia whose wound was healing, "And the recipient of the technique was unharmed… but sadly you are no longer of any use to me." He looked over at Gin and Kaname, "One of you kill her."

Gin and Kaname walked forward with Gin pulling out his Zanpakutou, "Ikorose-."

"Senjutsu: Rasenrengan (Sage Technique: Spiraling Group Spheres)!"

Naruto came up from behind Gin and Kaname and hit them both with twin Rasengans in both hands that sent them both flying. Taking advantage of the confusion, a heavily wounded Byakuya rescued Rukia from Aizen's grasp. Naruto slid across the ground hard, leaving a scratch in the earth as he came to a stop before glaring at Aizen from a crouched position, "I should have just played pack-rat and grabbed that little sword in the wall when I first saw it. That would have fucked your plans all up wouldn't it?"

Aizen drew his Zanpakutou and Naruto cursed, having discarded his sage coat earlier to fight Yamamoto without getting it burned. Before he could begin a fight with Naruto, Yoruichi and Soi-Fon surrounded him with Yoruichi holding his Zanpakutou and Soi-Fon holding hers to his neck, "If you move even a single muscle you'll lose your head."

"Very well." Aizen said, as right on cue two giants, the keepers of the other gates emerged, destroying much property in the Seireitei, "Not even you two can come after me while fighting those giants at the same time." Yoruichi and Soi-Fon were legitimately considering letting him go to protect the Seireitei.

"Shinra Tensei (Heavenly Subjugation of the Omnipresent God)!"

From where Naruto was standing, an invisible blast of gravity tore up half of the cliff he was standing at the edge of and hit the giant men, pancaking them into craters in the ground and swiftly defeating them in one move. Naruto's Sage Mode dropped, "Great… too much time passed for me to put that much behind Shinra Tensei and keep Sage Mode. Fine, I still have one clone left and the first one lasted a long time."

He turned back to Aizen once he felt the sky rip open above the Soukyouku. The other captains had Aizen, Kaname, and Gin surrounded until that opening was formed with multiple Menos Grande peeking through trying to spill out. Three beams emerged from the hole and snatched the three perpetrators up. Naruto's eyes angrily went into Sage Mode again as he formed two Kage Bunshin swiftly while they were slowly levitating away. They quickly formed a Rasenshuriken, "No you don't you son of a bitch, this is all your fault! I'll vaporize you here and now! Fuuton: Rasenshuriken (Wind Release: Spiraling Shuriken)!"

Naruto launched the attack right at the mouth of the hole in the sky where the Menos Grande all were.

"Naruto no!" Yoruichi yelled at him once he launched the attack, "Nothing we do can touch Aizen from here. The light he's in is technically in another dimension!"

The attack flew into the sky and hit the inside of the Hollow hole, eradicating each Menos Grande in the resulting explosion. Naruto glared up and Aizen and lifted his hand at him, "Get down here damn you! Banshou Ten'in (Heavenly Attraction of All Creation)!" No matter how much force Naruto pumped into the jutsu, none of the conspirators were pulled down an inch, "What are you trying to do?" He roared at Aizen, "You betrayed all of these people, your comrades! You orchestrated the death of someone innocent and killed so many people! What the hell was it all for?" He roared at Aizen.

Ukitake shook his head, "You truly have fallen Aizen."

"To go higher…" Aizen said simply, "No one starts on top of the world. Not you, not me, not even the gods. But the unbearable vacancy of the throne in the sky is over." He took his glasses off as his appearance radically changed, "From now on I will be sitting on it." He turned his back on everyone, "Goodbye Shinigami… and goodbye young Ryoka. You really are an interesting bunch, for humans." He disappeared into the portal as the sky closed.

Naruto was seething in rage at Aizen getting away, "Not again… never again… I'm never letting anyone like that gain power ever again!" He yelled, surprising everyone around him.

Yoruichi walked up and put a hand on his shoulder, "Naruto calm down. He's gone. We can't pursue him from here. Look around." She gestured to the area surrounding them and all of the wounded about across not just the hill, but all over the Seireitei, "There are more important things to do right now. This entire place has been turned upside down and needs to recover."

Naruto's breathing steadily slowed down and he deactivated his Rinnegan before plopping down on the ground, taking a seat. Naruto ran a hand through his hair and calmly shrugged off the attempts at medical attention, he was fine. The 4th Division was all about, healing the others. He saw Orihime tending to Ichigo, Rukia sitting next to her deeply wounded older brother Byakuya, and the other wounded getting treatment.

He looked up at Soi-Fon who was standing nearby with Yoruichi, "So… you still want to kill me?"

Soi-Fon glared down at him before shaking her head and softening her glance to her normal impassive look, "No. Everything is over. Like Yoruichi-sama said, there are more important things happening right now. There is no need to be angry with you."

Naruto nodded and hopped to his feet, "Okay, so let's try this again, but more pleasant this time." He held out his hand, "My name is Uzumaki Naruto, nice to meet you." Soi-Fon rolled her eyes and walked away, huffing and going to find her lieutenant. Naruto stood blinking as she walked away and turned to Yoruichi, "I thought she didn't want to kill me anymore."

Yoruichi let out a short laugh, "And she doesn't. She just doesn't like you much either." Naruto kneeled on the ground and played in the dirt dejectedly muttering 'why doesn't she like me', getting Yoruichi to pat him on the head, "It's okay Naruto, she'll come around… or not. Now come on. Let's go check on the others."

Naruto stood back up and dusted himself off when Yoruichi handed him his sage coat. He smiled and put it back on as they walked over to check on the other members of their group, but his eyes drifted back up to the sky and narrowed.

* * *

**In a completely random 'For the Record', I don't consider Ichigo's past fights against the captains of the Gotei 13 a victory. If he had been able to get up and walk away I would say that he had won, but he didn't. At the end he was in just as terrible condition as both Byakuya and Kenpachi. He couldn't move, neither could they, he didn't beat either of them, they were all equally as bad off as the other. That's not a win, that's a draw. If he had killed one of them but still had been unable to move that would have been a victory, but he didn't, it was a draw. I just felt I had to accentuate that. On a similar note I feel roughly the same about Naruto vs. Gaara. Both were alive, neither could keep fighting or even move. That's a draw. **

**The only reason it's really perceived as Naruto's win is because he stopped Gaara's demon form, but a win is being able to actually do something after the fight ends or killing your opponent, otherwise it's a deadlock. Not saying he didn't pull off what he set out to do, because he did, he stopped Gaara from turning Konoha into a smoking crater in the ground, I'm just saying that if you had just so happened to walk into the scenario, watch the fight, and leave when it was over without knowing the backstory and whatnot that it would be a draw in your mind.  
**

**Such a long chapter damn it but it needed to be done. Ugh… it's finally over. I have nothing to say, my brain is crapping out on me. I need evaluation… and dinner. And by dinner I don't mean gnome heads. You know! You done did it!**

…**Something's wrong with my head. I'm out of here before I start hallucinating. Kenchi out.**


	8. Immortal in the Seireitei

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach… bite me. Not really. There's only one woman I would allow to ever do that, and I can guarantee she isn't reading this shit that I'm writing.

**Chapter 8: Immortal in the Seireitei**

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It had been just over two days since the end of all of the ruckus that had occurred throughout the Seireitei and things were calming down. Though with all of the wounded and the issues certain keeping people from returning home, the more… shall we say restless individuals? Yes, the more restless individuals had to do what they could to fight boredom.

Naruto paced around in the front of a darkened room with a stern look on his face, "Quite honestly, you are all not that bad at all as far as a squad of ninja would go. For most people, you'd get the drop on them and kill them… unfortunately for all of you, I'm not most people, and I wound up kicking your asses in fast forward." Naruto stopped and looked out at the crowd of the shadowed members of the Onmitsukidou Executive Militia, "Any questions?" He waited for a moment to hear nothing, "Okay good, moving on."

He then pulled a dry erase board out and began drawing rudimentary diagrams, "One of the things that I noticed is that you all don't use that many traps. I expected the entire 2nd Division HQ to be booby trapped to the hilt, not a single one. Today's lecture will be to teach you all the nuances of trapping and the sweet science of the ambush. Questions?"

Once again no one said anything, "Good, then let's start. Now how do you know you're in an ambush? You're probably thinking, 'When things don't feel right.' Well in that case you're wrong, and being wrong means you're dead. You're being ambushed when everything feels right. When everything seems like it's going your way, things are going too well, and that means you're being ambushed."

"What about diversions?" One of the special forces said.

Naruto pointed at him, "That is a very good question. A good trap feels like a simple diversion, something threatening enough to get your attention to divert it from something else. If it feels like it's too easy to get out of, and the answer to the issue is too basic and spelled out for you it is a trap, and doing the obvious will get you killed. Likewise for situations that feel too comfortable when they really shouldn't." Naruto then blinked and his face went stark in realization, "Speaking of traps, this is one isn't it?" Everyone in the room remained still and silent, "Yeah, this is a trap. There's no way in hell I'd be getting in here without Soi-Fon trying to take my head off for doing it, which means-." Naruto was cut off when he quickly burst into smoke as a fist passed through it.

"Damn…" Soi-Fon said to herself, "I just missed him." She stood up and looked at the force that she commanded, "That was acceptable as a diversion. The execution on my part was flawed, I waited until he realized something was wrong to attempt to strike. Remember, never let your quarry have time to deduce that something is wrong or else your ambush is compromised. Now back to work." She said as she walked out of the room.

As she exited, the dry erase board transformed back into Naruto who cracked his neck and grinned at the elites, "Rule number one; I'm number one. Rule number two; there is never just one of me in a room. Rule number three; the more you have to convince yourself I'm not there, the better chance there is of me actually being there. You're all dismissed." Naruto said, disappearing in a swirl of leaves and wind.

XxX

Naruto reappeared outside, standing on the roof of the 2nd Division Headquarters with a smile on his face, "Ahh, I love this place, it's awesome. So many people to mess with, it's like a hidden village kind of."

"I'm glad you like it so much Uzumaki." Soi-Fon said as she stood behind him, "Any last words for trespassing on my division grounds?"

"Hello my little bee!" Naruto said turning to face her before blocking her Zanpakutou with a kunai, "As kind of you as it is, I don't really want another one of your love-marks beautiful. People will start spreading rumors about us."

Soi-Fon narrowed her eyes at him and put her Zanpakutou up, "I don't really want to hear this from you."

Naruto in turn placed his kunai back up his sleeve and out of sight, "Fine. So what are you doing right now? Don't you need to get back to your office? Everyone in any position of influence or power I've ever met had tons of office busy-work to take care of."

"Well I'm efficient unlike many of the other captains, and my seated officers handle all but the most pressing of affairs for my squad. All I really do is work for the Onmitsukidou." Soi-Fon explained to him before coughing in her hand as she remembered what she wanted with him, "I have to speak to you about a few issues."

Naruto looked at the petite captain and tilted his head in puzzlement, "Like what? What do you need from me?"

Soi-Fon turned on her heel and walked away, "Follow me to my office, we can talk freely there." She said before vanishing as she utilized Shunpo.

Naruto rolled his eyes at the dismissive way she just ordered him to do something, "Woman… you could have at least walked with me _to_ the office… nevermind the fact that I know the way. That's not the point." He said before disappearing in another swirl of leaves and wind.

XxX

(4th Division Headquarters – Medical Bay)

Ichigo was stuck in his bed. Despite the fact that Orihime quickly healed him on the spot keeping him from critical condition, nearly getting cut in half hurt like hell, and really didn't give much weight towards asking the head of the healing division to leave a mere two days later. And he learned that anyone trying to cause a ruckus in her HQ under the watch of one Unohana Retsu would inevitably be scared shitless by the seemingly docile, tender woman.

Letting out a sigh, Ichigo peered outside of his window, bored to death, "Stupid wounds… I'm so damn bored in here. I want to go find everyone else… and where's Rukia at?"

"I can find everyone for you if you need me to Ichigo." Ichigo turned to his open window to see Yoruichi looking inside from outdoors, "I'm kind of bored anyway."

"No…" He said, sitting up and looking over at the beautiful woman, "Everyone doesn't need to be in here messing around with me." He sat in thought for a moment before speaking, "Hey Yoruichi, why did Naruto come to the Soul Society with us? I mean, I don't know him like I do Chad, Uryuu, and Inoue, and he didn't know Rukia at all."

Yoruichi smiled, "I guess you could consider it him doing a favor for me. I wanted to come back here to look things over anyway, and I wanted someone else I knew could handle themselves to come along to help me keep you all out of too much trouble." She leaned on the windowsill, placing her cheeks in her hands, "Why do you ask Ichigo?"

Ichigo scratched his head, "I don't know. He's a strange guy, and he's strong. He's really strong. How did you even convince him to do it?"

"It wasn't that hard." Yoruichi said in a sly manner, "Of course it didn't hurt that I transformed right in front of him after I asked. He's a pervert, but he's a reliable person, and you already know about his immortality thing. Do you believe it?"

Ichigo frowned at the question, "I don't know what to think. Everything he said sounded 100% serious. Do you believe him?"

Yoruichi nodded with a serious look on her face, "Absolutely I do. He's knowledgeable about too many events in the world of the living that no one should know about, and he can give me first-hand accounts of certain times in your human history." She then kept her last thought to herself, 'And eyes like that can't fake pain when recalling all of the time that has passed for one person. It's his eyes… no matter what they will always show the emotion he tries to keep to himself for those skilled enough to seek it.'

Ichigo lay back down in his bed, "Well either way, I trust him. I didn't at first, but after this whole crazy thing and all of the stuff we did I can't help but respect the guy. Hey, how strong is he by the way?"

Yoruichi blinked, "I don't really know. I fought him before, but that was before both of us were in actual fighting shape, it was mostly us messing around before we traded one good attack and that was that. He fought the captain-commander Yamamoto without too much damage being done to either of them so I don't know how good he really is. When he fought Soi-Fon he held back too much on my account and got himself hurt badly."

Ichigo took all of this to mind, "So if we fought could I beat him?" Yoruichi snorted and began laughing, putting a tick mark of annoyance on the Substitute Shinigami's head, "All you had to do was say, 'Not yet Ichigo.' Or better yet you could have just said no. But you had to laugh didn't you?"

XxX

(2nd Division Headquarters – Soi-Fon's Office)

Naruto sat comfortably in a chair in front of Soi-Fon's desk as he patiently watched finish up her work. He simply chose to look aimlessly around the office that he had already been in beforehand with Yoruichi, but getting a claw-mark across the face kept him from analyzing everything he could in there.

"Stop sizing up my office Uzumaki." Soi-Fon said, not looking up from her work, but still well aware of what Naruto was doing, "I'll be done in just a moment."

Naruto gave a smile that she couldn't see, "It's okay, you can do what you want. I have all the time in the world… literally. There's no rush for me my little bee."

Soi-Fon kept silent until she finished and set her completed documents to the side, "First of all, will you stop calling me that. Only Yoruichi-sama has ever called me that and I would like that to remain as it is."

Naruto thought about it for a moment, "Will you go out with me-?" He could feel her Reiatsu spike at the implication, "-To explore the Seireitei? Damn, let me finish first Soi-Fon!" He cleared his throat and continued, "I have no idea where I'm going or what there is to do for any kind of relief around here. What do you do in your spare time?"

"I train." Soi-Fon said, glaring at him slightly, "That's what a good warrior is supposed to do in times of peace, train their bodies and spirits for times of strife."

Naruto fought the urge to sigh, "I meant when you're not training. You've got to have a cool down hobby."

Soi-Fon quickly answered him, "I meditate."

Naruto's smile returned as he leaned forward in his chair and put his hands on her desk, "There you go, that's something. I meditate all the time too, it's relaxing. So what else do you do for fun? Come on, you've got to have something."

"No, I don't." Soi-Fon said, starting to get perturbed with Naruto.

Speaking of Naruto, he gave her a deadpan look before abruptly standing and grabbing her arm, surprising Soi-Fon with the sudden action. He got as far as halfway to the door when she reversed his grip to a dominant position for her behind his back and shoved him face-first into said door, "Ow. Close aren't we? Didn't even have to buy you dinner first… I'm awesome."

Soi-Fon jerked his arm to an uncomfortable angle, "What do you think you're doing Uzumaki? Speak quickly before you lose this." She said, accentuating her point by putting more torque in his arm.

I just- Ow! Okay!" Naruto said, trying to get her to ease off of him, "I just wanted to get you out of this stuffy old office. You're too pretty to be doing nothing but working all the time. How long have you been doing this? One-hundred years?"

Soi-Fon was no longer trying to break his arm, but she moved close enough to hiss lowly into his ear, "I don't like you Uzumaki." He opened his mouth to offer a witty retort when she jerked his arm to get him to be quiet, "Shut. Up. You have an incredible amount of skill for battle, you fought Yamamoto-sotaichou to a stand-still, you got the better of me in our conflict. You are powerful and yet you walk around with this attitude. You never take anything seriously, you always pretend that everything is all a big joke, even in combat. What is wrong with you?"

Naruto looked over his shoulder at Soi-Fon, staying silent for a long time as her hardened eyes tried burrowing into his head with her gaze, "You really don't like me?"

"No." She said assertively, "I tolerate you because Yoruichi-sama holds you in high regard for some reason. Were that not the case I probably would have tried to exterminate you by now for being a nuisance. But trying to kill you would clearly displease her, and your death isn't worth it." Soi-Fon finally let go of Naruto's arm and let him turn to face her.

Naruto was rubbing his arm trying to get the feeling of pins and needles out, "I see… Yoruichi-chan huh?"

"Yoruichi-sama!" Soi-Fon exclaimed threateningly, "You will address her properly."

Naruto picked at his ear, "Yeah… no. I don't address anyone properly. I haven't done it once in the tons of years I've been alive and I'll be damned if I start now. So let's go find Yoruichi-chan right now. I can do it."

Initially she had planned to berate him for once again using Yoruichi's name in a far too familiar manner, however after registering what he had said along with it, Soi-Fon's eyes widened, "Really?"

"Really." Naruto said with a grin.

"Right now?" She wondered, an opportunity to actually spend time with her idol for the first time in over one-hundred years dangling right in front of her, "I have to remain behind in case of work. It's my duty."

"Blah, blah, blah." Naruto said as he created a Kage Bunshin and Henged it into Soi-Fon before sending it behind the desk in her place, "There. The only way to prove it isn't you is to punch it in the face. Is there anyone at all under your command with the balls to do that?" Soi-Fon shook her head, "Then that means that you're clear. My clone is no dummy and anything that it can't do it'll leave for you when we get back, so let's go!" He said, opening the window in her office and jumping out, motioning for her to follow, "If I find her and you're not with me I'm not sending her over to you."

That was all Soi-Fon needed to get going. She was sick of that stuffy office anyway. As long as her work got done who really cared if she stepped out for a moment? She was a damn captain, she could do what she wanted. So with that in mind, Soi-Fon hopped outside with Naruto and the two took off in search of one Shihouin Yoruichi.

XxX

"Okay… She wasn't in the hideout. I knew that was going to happen." Naruto said as he and Soi-Fon walked through the roads of the Seireitei, "The only reason we went up there is because you insisted on seeing it." Naruto then pouted, "You didn't even want to use the hot spring while we were there."

"Not with you I didn't." Soi-Fon quipped dryly as the two walked along, Shinigami moving out of their path as they did.

Naruto quickly noticed this, "Oi, are the other Shinigami scared of you or something?"

Soi-Fon's face didn't really register any interest in the question, "My skill and strength would make me unapproachable by most, it would be natural that I would intimidate them. Honestly, since Yoruichi-sama did years ago you're actually the only person that has ever done anything like this with me. Feel honored Uzumaki."

Naruto felt the urge to facepalm, 'It's not your power that really does it, it's your demeanor. If they weren't me then they'd obviously think that talking to you would cost them their lives.' Naruto decided to attempt to keep engaging the beautiful assassin in conversation, "So where are we and what's special about this place?"

The road opened up into a rather spacious area with multiple buildings intended for living facilities all around them as Soi-Fon began to explain, "This is the 8th Division Headquarters and Barracks. Captain Kyouraku Shunsui is the leader of this division. He seems to be a person after your own heart Uzumaki. I have no idea why you would spend so much time pestering me and my division when you could come here."

Naruto threw up his hands behind his head, "I keep hanging out around the 2nd Division because it reminds me the most of my original home." He then kept the follow-up thought of that comment to himself, 'That, and I am going to find a way to talk to you if it kills me… and you're probably going to be the one to do that yourself at this rate.' He decided to try his plan of getting Soi-Fon to open up, "So… when we fought you didn't use your Bankai on me. Why?"

Soi-Fon casually started answering his question as it was a topic she had no problems talking about, fighting, "My Bankai goes directly against my fighting style. It's not the type to be used by a covert ops specialist. I can't move the way I need to when I use it, and the actual attack it causes is not exactly subtle."

Naruto nodded, he had plenty of moves like that. Hell, his entire career was based off of using moves that were way too destructive for his own good, "So can I see it? I'll show you mine?" He then blinked and thought about what he had just said once he felt Soi-Fon glaring at him, "I did not intend that to sound the way it did. I meant your Bankai." 'Kind of.'

"It would tire me out for no reason at all…" Soi-Fon reasoned for not doing so and letting his potential innuendo slide, "And it's not really the kind of technique you use for exhibitions or demonstrations."

"Boo…" Naruto said, though he understood. Half of his attacks weren't really things that he wanted to use in front of people that he didn't have a current pressing gripe with, "Do you think Yoruichi-chan is here?" He rolled his eyes when he felt Soi-Fon glare at him, "I'm not going to call her –sama. You might as well try to stab me if it's really bothering you that much."

"It's worth a look." Soi-Fon said resolutely, "And don't complain or question me. You were the one that wanted me to take you on a tour of the Seireitei anyway, this is as close as you're going to get to one." She led him inside of the main building of the division grounds and straight to the office of Shunsui where she simply let herself in, "Kyouraku-taichou."

The man looked up from leaning back in his desk chair at Soi-Fon and Naruto standing in the doorway. Naruto pointed at the relaxed looking captain, "Hey you're the guy that was about to help me fight Yamamoto-jiji."

Shunsui pointed back, "And you're the kid that was going toe-to-toe with Yama-jii and smoked all of those Menos Grande with that one attack. What's your name again… it's supposed to be really familiar to me for some reason."

Naruto gave him a deadpan look, "It's Uzumaki Naruto. Nice to meet you now that I'm not fighting the lot of you, and who knows, you might even come to like me. Me and Soi-Fon had a little run-around during all of the invasion stuff, and now look, we're great friends!" He tried putting an arm around her and wound up eating a jab to the breadbasket that had him sucking air, "See? That was friendly little love-tap." He said in a squeaky voice.

Shunsui nodded and chuckled at Naruto and Soi-Fon's interaction, "So what can I do for both of you? Do you need my assistance with something or would you simply like to have a drink with me."

Naruto raised his hand, "I vote we do the second one." Soi-Fon forcefully lowered his arm, "Oh come on, why not? I want to get you drunk, you look like you'd be more fun that way." She refused to budge on the matter, "Damn it, fine… maybe I'll come back later. Have you seen Yoruichi-chan anywhere? I haven't seen her all day. We're looking for her."

Shunsui rubbed his stubble as he thought, "I can't say that I have. You might want to ask one of your other friends, the ones you came here with. The Ichigo kid should still be in the medical ward if you head over towards the 4th Division way." He shrugged his shoulders, "Other than that I don't know what to tell you."

Soi-Fon nodded, "Thank you anyway. Until the next time we meet Kyouraku-taichou." She then turned to exit the room.

Naruto was quick to follow suit until Shunsui called out to him, "Ah, actually I do remember where I know your name." He reached into his desk and pulled out a familiar orange book, "Would you do me the honor of signing this for me Naruto-sama? I'm sorry, but I had to hide it from my lieutenant and Soi-Fon-taichou."

Naruto looked around the corners outside for Soi-Fon before grinning and pulling out a pen, "Of course. Good to see that I have Shinigami fans. We should hang out sometime."

XxX

(4th Division Headquarters)

"So what was it you were doing talking with Kyouraku-taichou back there?" Soi-Fon asked him as they both walked through the halls of the medical-based squad, "You had a satisfied look on your face when you caught up to me."

Naruto had a knowing grin on his face, "Oh nothing. I just have more fans of my writing skills than I could have ever imagined. I wonder how much money I have in the Soul Society now compared to the money from the living world… I need to check my account soon."

Soi-Fon gave him a look of skepticism, "You write? And you actually make money from it? That's a shocker."

"Think what you want to. My bank account should tell you all you need to know when the time comes." Naruto replied rather dismissively, "Ah the hospital! Much to my surprise and utter delight I actually avoided a prolonged stay in here this time. I didn't touch a single shred of hospital fabric whatsoever." He said, rather proud of that fact. However Soi-Fon failed to see the magnitude of that 'achievement'.

"Whatever you say Uzumaki. Now help me find the Kurosaki brat." Soi-Fon said sternly.

"Fine." Naruto said, "I'm going to get a smile out of you before the day is over, and I don't mean a smirk like when I get hurt, no I mean an actual honest smile. Ichigo!"

Soi-Fon turned to him almost fearfully if he didn't know any better, "Quiet you idiot, don't be so loud in here!" She hissed in a whisper, "You don't want to upset _her_."

Naruto looked at the leader of the Onmitsukidou as if she were someone completely foreign to him, "You sound shaken up. I stuck you to a giant ball of random debris and threw you at a barrier and you didn't seem as shaken up as you are right now. And upset who? Everyone in this division seems totally chill." Naruto cupped his hands to his mouth again, "Ichigo! Oi, where are you at you punk?" He yelled, getting a cringe out of Soi-Fon at his tone.

"I'm glad you like the atmosphere of our Division so much Uzumaki-san." The calming voice of Unohana Retsu said as she appeared behind Naruto and Soi-Fon, sending a shiver down the spine of one and putting a smile on the face of the other, "However I would appreciate it if you took Soi-Fon-taichou's advice and toned it down while you were here. We have people recovering from their injuries here."

Naruto turned around to face Unohana and met her beautiful smile with his own, "Sorry Retsu-chan. We were just looking for Ichigo, and I kind of knew that making a ruckus would bring you around here. Let's just say I wanted to say hi without the chance of fireballs flying all around my head, so hello."

"Hello to you to Uzumaki-san." Unohana said, bowing slightly to him, "And as long as you keep your volume down feel free to look around for Kurosaki-san. You were heading the right way anyway. Keep going this way to reach the medical bay, it should be easy to find him from there."

Naruto nodded, committing the information to memory, "Got it. Thank you Retsu-chan. I'll have to come back and talk to you sometime before I leave. It would be nice to be on good terms with a doctor with as much as I get beat up. Especially such a pretty one." He finished, winking at her and getting a wave for his troubles as he and Soi-Fon walked away.

"Must you be so incorrigible you deviant?" Soi-Fon questioned as they got a distance away from Unohana, "Honestly, Unohana-taichou is a captain of the Gotei 13, and here you are throwing that hapless attitude of yours around like this. It's disrespectful."

Naruto looked back at the lovely Unohana who waved once more before going back to her own business, "I don't think it's that disrespectful because first of all I'm not a Shinigami so your ranks don't really mean that much to me. Second of all don't you guys get sick of people walking around you like they're tiptoeing through a minefield? You can only have a straight conversation with other captains because everyone is always kissing your ass. I'm sure she's kind of tired of it all of the time. She seemed to enjoy the way I was talking."

Taking note of the fact that Naruto easily talked his way out of Unohana's tense smiling aura that usually went with someone disturbing things in her division HQ, Soi-Fon almost had to concede the issue, "I see your point…"

Naruto nodded, "I mean, wouldn't you want at least one person in your division that isn't a yes man? From what I've seen even your lieutenant is, and he's pretty cocky most of the rest of the time so having a guy like that fall in line is really something." A smirk came to his face, "He kind of recoiled that one time when I was doing that lecture on throwing killing intent into your Reiatsu… that was pretty good." He noticed a smirk form on Soi-Fon's face, "There you go, I'm getting you there. It looks like you have a little mischievous streak in you. I like that."

"Well… I haven't wanted to kill you since we left my headquarters so I guess it is something." Soi-Fon said, the look on her face softening further as she and Naruto continued, "So are you sure that Kurosaki Ichigo can help us?"

Naruto shoved his hands in his pockets and kept walking alongside his companion for the day, "Well if I don't know where Yoruichi-chan is and you don't know, he's the only other person I can think of besides Byakuya who would know and he's here too so we'd have to head here and find him anyway." He grinned to the woman at his side, "I'm not as dumb as I look and act all the time."

Soi-Fon shook her head, "One inconsistency cannot make up for an entire acquaintanceship leaning towards the contrary." Soi-Fon abruptly stopped at a door, "Kurosaki's in there." She noticed Naruto wondering how she could find him so easily, "Even when he's not fighting, his Reiryoku is abnormally high. Anyone with good experience in sensing spiritual power can find one such as him." She turned her eyes towards him, almost teasing… wait a minute, she _was_ teasing him! She was teasing him, holy shit!

Naruto let out a fake laugh, "Ha, ha, ha. So sue me. I'm new at this whole sensing spiritual energy thing. I'm more used to looking for, and finding the living. Dealing with mostly physical powers." Naruto thumped himself on the chest, "Just give me some time, I'll get the hang of it perfectly. At least I'm back in the saddle when it comes to the fighting part now." Naruto opened the door and gestured for Soi-Fon to enter first, "Oi, Ichigo. How are you doing?"

Ichigo looked at the door and heard Naruto's voice but saw him with Soi-Fon, "I'm just great for a guy that almost got cut in half not too long ago. But what are you two doing here, and together to boot?" He tilted his head curiously, "Are you two on a date?"

Naruto held Soi-Fon in place before she could go over and cause any more harm to Ichigo to make him stay in the hospital for longer, "Soi-Fon if you kill him you'll get in trouble and Yoruichi-chan will be pissed." 'Or amused, but for Ichigo's sake I'll keep that one to myself.' He let her go when she calmed down and he ended up catching a sharp elbow to the ribs that he was ready for this time and took head on like a champ, "Anyway, we need your help. Have you seen Yoruichi-chan today?"

Ichigo raised an eyebrow, "She's not with you? I thought she would have gone to find you to mess with you after she left here. I don't know where she is now."

Naruto let out a sigh. He didn't want to use Kage Bunshin because now it was starting to become a matter of pride. He would be damned if he had lost his touch so much that he couldn't track Yoruichi just in his leisure time. He was going to find her before sunset, lack of knowledge of the area layout be damned, "Alright Ichigo… thanks anyway though."

Soi-Fon turned and left, as did Naruto, just at a more reserved pace, allowing Ichigo to stop him at the door, "Hey Naruto." Naruto turned at the doorway and faced the young man, "So are you two actually on a date?"

Naruto blinked and delivered his answer in a straightforward and completely serious manner, "Yes. Yes we are." He gave him a thumbs up while keeping his same expression and finally left the room where he found Soi-Fon waiting right against the wall, glaring at him, "Yes I knew you were right there the entire time, do something about it. I did that because he is going to tell people, and it's going to be hilarious."

"Wait until we get outside." She warned him, keeping a schooled expression, "It won't be funny in a minute."

"Yes it will." Naruto insisted, not too frightened by her not-so-veiled threat, "Because you and I both know that there's no way in hell you're going to be caught chasing me all over the place in broad daylight… my little bee."

XxX

(45 Minutes Later)

And he was right. She _wasn't _caught. Of course Naruto had forgotten that Soi-Fon was only second to Yoruichi when it came to mastery of her Shunpo, and when people tried looking at her moving when she went fast enough all they would see was a blur... if even that… and if she never stopped they would never know it was really her.

And clearly, when she activated her Shikai and gave him a quick, shallow little cut on his chest followed by the most evil look he had ever seen on her face, Naruto realized she was legitimately chasing his ass down and activated Swift Release. From that point forward all bets were off. If he stopped to get help, not that any of the random Shinigami they flew past at full speed could actually help him, she would get one free shot at him that if she had mercy and chose not to kill him, would take him down before he could even utter a word for assistance and drag him off to beat his ass away from prying eyes or anyone that could hear him scream in horror.

So he didn't stop… and neither did she… and he couldn't lose her… no matter how hard he tried.

No amount of Kage Bunshin could get her to divert her attention as she would kill them as fast as he could make them, they would only buy him half a second at the most, and she would be right back on him. At this point he was legitimately impressed, and afraid for his life, but hadn't looked over his shoulder in over ten minutes because she would still be there.

"Stop chasing me damn it! We're running out of Seireitei here!" Naruto shouted as the massive gates separating the Seireitei from the Rukongai drew closer and closer, "What the hell are you going say when we rip up half of the Rukongai running all over the place?"

"The Ryoka was getting out of hand and I had to stop him." Soi-Fon answered just the way she would if the issue were to be brought before Yamamoto, "It's my word against yours and I have tenure to say the least. You can't keep this up all day Uzumaki."

Naruto rolled his eyes and formed another Kage Bunshin to take a hit for him as Soi-Fon had drawn too close once again, "Are you kidding me? Did I drop you on your head when we fought or did you really forget? I'm fucking Uzumaki Naruto! At the rate this is draining chakra I'm getting back more than I'm losing over time."

Soi-Fon smirked as she continued to chase Naruto down, "It's not like I'm losing that much energy either Uzumaki. Eventually you'll slip up and I'll be right there."

Soi-Fon's speed with Shunpo consisted of covering the most amount of space with the least amount of steps. And she was the best at it besides Yoruichi. Naruto's speed was based on him using his kekkei genkai that blended lightning for sheer speed, wind for lessening his weight to move fast enough to at times leave afterimages, and yang chakra to reinforce his entire body so that he didn't damage parts of it like his eyes (and so that he could use them to see while moving so fast), to move his legs as fast as possible and haul ass. It was perfect for someone with his stamina and regenerative capabilities, otherwise moving his legs that fast could be dangerous.

"Jidanbou open the gate!" Naruto shouted frantically as he knew they were cutting it close here, "For the love of Kami, open the damn gate or I am going to die!" He opened his sage coat to reveal a butterfly mark on his chest, "She already tagged me once damn it!"

The giant man with fantastic hearing had come to like the borderline maniacal blonde after he stopped his rogue fellow gate guardians, and he really didn't want to see if the notorious captain of the 2nd Division would actually go through with it and kill him, "Don't stop running Naruto, I'm on it!" The man lifted the large door just in time for the two to rush under his feet and exit the Seireitei.

"Free volume just for you big man! Everyone I owe favors to gets one!"

Naruto's voice echoed as he and Soi-Fon tore through the streets, leaving the civilian soul denizens of the town in their wake. Jidanbou grinned to himself and lowered the gate, "I hope it's the new sequel he hasn't published yet… I already have the first one."

XxX

(Shiba Clan Home)

Yoruichi and Kuukaku sat in her main room simply drinking sake and lazing around. The Shiba Clan head let out a sigh as she leaned back on the multiple pillows on the floor, "It's been a while since we've been able to spend time like this Yoruichi. It's nice to have you out of that cat form of yours."

"Hey." Yoruichi pointed her saucer at Kuukaku in false offense, "I happened to like my cat form. It's almost as cute as the real me is, don't you think so?"

"You cannot enter the premises without permission, leave now!" One of Kuukaku's massive bodyguards shouted from outside, alerting the two women inside.

"Get the fuck out of my way or I'll use your skull to bust the door down!" A loud crash was heard before the sound of bodies falling down the stairs. Both Yoruichi and Kuukaku got up and looked outside the room to see Naruto standing on the two unconscious bodies of the two men at the foot of the stairs. Naruto jumped off and kicked one of them multiple times in irritation.

"Naruto?" Yoruichi said, getting the man's attention, and stopping him from repeatedly kicking the downed servants of the clan, "What the hell are you doing here?"

Kuukaku looked at Naruto's feet and shrugged, "At least he took his shoes off before he dropkicked my servants down the stairs."

Naruto looked at Yoruichi and almost broke down in tears at the sight of her, "Oh you beautiful, beautiful, gracious, magnanimous woman! I'm so glad I wasn't wrong about you being here because this is a dead end! Why were you so hard to find?" He immediately flew to her feet and wrapped himself around her legs, hugging them tightly, "I thought I was dead like eight times back there! She just kept coming! But when she stopped to fight me all of the people around realized who I was and ran over to get my autograph. Greatest human shields ever."

Yoruichi cocked an eyebrow with an amused look on her face while Kuukaku was trying and failing to hold back her laughter at seeing the mighty warrior reduced to a blubbering heap, "Alright calm down Naruto and tell me what's wrong. Who's chasing you?"

"I don't know why you took refuge in this strange house Uzumaki and I don't care, but your Reiryoku is so panicked and wild right now I could find you half way around the Soul Society."

Naruto's head almost snapped a full 180 at the sound of the voice and he immediately jumped up and ran inside the room Kuukaku and Yoruichi had been in. Soi-Fon came downstairs with her Shikai on her arm, looking around for Naruto before noticing who was there, "Yoruichi-sama?"

Yoruichi had a sly smile on her face and pointed off to the side where Naruto had dove into to hide, "He's in there. There's no way out from that room."

"Yoruichi-chan!"

Yoruichi laughed a bit, "You should know better than to poke at a bee Naruto, least of all _my_ little bee. She's got one hell of a sting."

"I noticed! Now for the love of Kami call her off! Seriously, if I have to fight in here we're going to tear this place apart!"

"Oh hell no!" Kuukaku shouted, grabbing Soi-Fon before she could walk into the room and try to kick Naruto's ass, "You're not messing up the house I put so much effort in setting up! Do you know how long it took to set this entire house to go with this theme? Take it outside!"

Naruto walked out of the room now that it was reasonably safe, "I'm not going out there anytime soon. Not while Soi-Fon's still pissed and has her love mark on me." He looked at the mark on his chest and narrowed his eyes at the woman in question, "You know, you can turn this thing off anytime you want to."

"I know." She replied, the cheekiness of her tone hidden by the basic delivery of the words.

Kuukaku threw her hands in the air in exasperation, "Fine, if no one's leaving I'm going to get back to what I was doing before this. Getting drunk." She said as she walked back into the room.

"Oi, right here! Let me get some of that." Naruto said as he followed her inside, "Maybe if I get drunk I'll forget about my impending doom."

Yoruichi shrugged and walked inside as well, dragging Soi-Fon with her, "Come on Soi-Fon, it's been a while since we could sit and talk like this. You should actually thank Naruto for whatever it is he did." She smirked at her, "You'd still be in that office of yours right now if he hadn't."

"Yoruichi get in here! This baby-faced punk says he can take _me_ down in a drinking contest, we need a judge!"

"Ha! I've hung out with alcoholics of all shapes and sizes for years, I'm untouchable!"

XxX

(The Next Day)

Naruto awoke, unable to move, laying on the floor of Kuukaku's audience room with only one thing to say, in the quietest voice ever, "Greatest wake up ever." Naruto's right arm was being used as a pillow, instead of all the _actual_ pillows nearby, by Kuukaku and he found his arm deposited between a rather soft and abundant area on the woman's chest. His left arm was likewise being used as such by Yoruichi who was further up on his shoulder towards his face, so much so that he could feel her breath tickling his ear. And then there was Soi-Fon, who was using a combination of his legs and Yoruichi's legs to lay her head on. She was a very light girl.

"I'm glad you think so." Yoruichi said, opening her eyes slowly with a grin that started spreading across her face. She let out a yawn and laid her head back on his shoulder as she looked at him tiredly, "I was looking for you yesterday to tell you that Yamamoto-sotaichou wanted a meeting with you today."

Naruto narrowed his eyes at her, "Yamamoto-jiji wants to see me today? Why?"

Yoruichi shut her eyes, "I don't know. You should show up though."

"Of course I am." Naruto said before his eyes widened at what his clone from yesterday had given him when it dispelled in his sleep, "Damn, Soi-Fon and I need to wake up now. That thing that Yamamoto-jiji wants to see me for, she's supposed to be there too with all of the other captains. Please don't tell me we slept until noon, that's when the meeting was supposed to be"

Letting out a sound of disappointment at having to move, Yoruichi let go of Naruto's arm and slowly removed herself from Soi-Fon's grasp, walking into Kuukaku's bedroom to check the time before returning, "It's 9:34. You've got over two hours."

"Great." Naruto said, comfortable that he would have time to get himself together and make it back with time to spare, "Now can you help me get these women off of me." He frowned visibly after saying that, "I should never have to repeat that sentence ever again."

Yoruichi giggled and helped him slowly start prying Kuukaku off of his arm, laughing quietly as she looked down at Soi-Fon, "She's still a lightweight I see. She didn't even have much."

Naruto smiled as he pulled Soi-Fon off of his legs, "Don't make fun of Soi-Fon. We all can't be alcoholic juggernauts like me."

"Like her do you?" Yoruichi grinned at him as she helped him stand up and watch him shake his legs out to get blood flow back into them.

"Well… yeah." Naruto said, stretching himself out lightly, "Despite it being completely terrifying when she was chasing me yesterday, I'm more than a little convinced that it was just her playing. She wouldn't have killed me if she had caught me." He looked down at the still sleeping captain, "Right? I mean as far as I could see we were playing like that all day long."

Yoruichi pointed at his chest, "Well the mark is gone so I would say she wasn't really mad at you, not like after your fight." She gestured for him to leave, "Now get going towards the Seireitei. I'll wake up Soi-Fon and send her right after you." Naruto threw his sage coat on and saluted her before leaving the house altogether.

XxX

(Two Hours Later – 1st Division Headquarters)

With the pace Naruto had cut in returning to the Seireitei it hadn't take long for an awakened and freshened up Soi-Fon to catch him, apparently not suffering any hangover effects or saddled with any memories of how she had slept the previous night. And thusly, the two fell into step on their way to the captain-commander himself, "So do you even know what this is about? The order that the clone playing you was given was really vague." Naruto asked her.

"No idea Uzumaki." Soi-Fon replied, "Just don't make yourself look foolish in there. Every captain will be there and whatever it is you're going to be there for you're going to want to seem somewhat dignified."

Naruto gave her a strange look, "What about that guy with the eyepatch and spiky belled hair?"

"Well-."

"Or what about the weird guy with the pasty clown face and weird headgear? That's dignified."

"I'm not-."

Naruto kept cutting her off as they walked through the halls, "And if you think for one second I'm going to go walking around acting like Byakuya you might as well forget about it. I'll strike a happy medium."

Soi-Fon let out an exasperated sigh, "I would kick you in the head, but we don't have time for this today."

Naruto smirked, "Whatever, you would need a ladder to reach anyway. Or maybe I could get down on one knee to help you?" Before she could retaliate he pointed at an open pair of double doors that represented the Captains' Assembly Hall, saving himself from her wrath, for now anyway.

As the two entered, Soi-Fon fell in line with the other captains who stood in two even lines as Naruto stood at the opposite end of them, facing Yamamoto who soon began to speak, "Uzumaki Naruto. First of all I would like to thank you for cleaning the 1st Division headquarters after all of the unpleasantness was over with." He opened with a little joke that got a grin out of Naruto and a few captains.

Naruto rubbed the back of his head sheepishly, "No problem. After all my clones were the ones who did it." And they were the ones that cleaned it. The sight of fifty Narutos cleaning the building brought some cheer to the rather gloomy atmosphere after Aizen's betrayal, "Sorry about that. They're a little wild without being given orders."

The old captain cleared his throat, "Well I have some questions to ask you and I'm fairly certain that the others here do as well. So I'll be opening the floor for them to do so before I ask my own." Naruto nodded his agreement to the proceedings and pointed at the rather interested looking man with the almost skeletal visage. It was actually the same man that Naruto had been referring to earlier.

"Kurotsuchi Mayuri, captain of the 12th Division and president of the Shinigami Research Institute." He said, introducing himself to Naruto before getting down to business with his question, "For a human you have a very strange balance in your Reiryoku, among many other irregularities that normally go with your race. That is something I would like to examine at some point during your stay in the Seireitei."

Naruto seemed to miss the combination of the gleam in his eyes and the fact that he really didn't ask him if he could examine him, he just said he was _going _to, "Yeah sure, just find me if you need me later. Me or one of my clones should be flying all over the place for another week at least."

With his only real concern for showing up sated, the scientist captain stood back and allowed for another to ask a question, this time a rather large man with an eyepatch and bells in his spiked hair, "Are you any stronger than Ichigo?"

Naruto shrugged, "Well… yeah." He saw an evil grin form on the man's face and wound up putting some past information together at just that moment, "You're Zaraki Kenpachi aren't you?" The man nodded, never taking his eyes off of Naruto, "Shit."

"Are there any other questions?" Yamamoto asked the captains, getting no response, "Well Uzumaki-san I have a few questions for you myself. I am aware of the age of Kurosaki Ichigo and his friends, but your own is a mystery to me. How old are you?"

Naruto scratched his head and thought hard, "I'm not sure… I'm around two hundred years older than the current calendar system, but I stopped counting until that system fell into use because it was useless to know, so I don't really know. Am I older than you?"

Yamamoto actually laughed at this, "No… I'm still older than you. You're as old as my two pupils though it seems. And you still look so young."

Naruto frowned, "That's because this age was the age I was at when all of the things that wound up making me immortal fell into place. It's kind of cool though." He said with a grin, "I'm apparently right at the age that separates kids from adults in this era so I can walk both sides of the line. In my time I was just an adult, so I didn't get any privileges as a kid… ever really." He looked over at A small captain with spiky white hair, "You know what I'm talking about don't you?" He got a simple roll of the eyes from the child-looking captain.

"Teasing Hitsugaya-taichou aside Uzumaki-san." Yamamoto interjected, getting the meeting back on track, "What certain elements combined to make you immortal?"

Naruto sighed, "My family had a natural lifeforce that far exceeded any other. I have the hereditary eyes of the man that had been perceived as a god by many in my time, the Rinnegan. I have a perfect synchronization with nature in the living world that keeps me healthy and my body strong, and here's the kicker, I have the most powerful entity in the history of the world trapped in my body for as long as I live. A creature known as the Juubi."

Yamamoto's eyes opened slightly wider, "How powerful is this creature? And how are you keeping it at bay?"

Naruto lifted his shirt and channeled chakra to his belly, "This is just the spiritual embodiment of it. It's physical and spiritual energy or as I would call it, chakra." An elaborate seal marking on Naruto's belly appeared and spread all along his torso, "This keeps the power at bay. The physical body is trapped in the moon orbiting the Earth." He heard a snicker or two, "Fine, don't believe me, I don't care. I don't even want to tell any of you this."

Ukitake looked at Naruto in confusion, "Then why are you doing so now?"

Naruto turned to him and lowered his shirt, "Because now you guys know who I am and are going to try and keep tabs on me in the world of the living. You would have found out eventually, and this way at least I can explain things or answer questions you have before you start jumping to conclusions and order my extermination or something." He crossed his arms, "I have a very good track record of destroying those that try destroying me."

Komamura stepped forward and moved in front of Yamamoto as he perceived Naruto's words as a threat, "What are you saying? What do you want with the Seireitei and the Soul Society?"

Naruto looked at the wolf-headed Shinigami with no alarm or fear, he had seen far stranger things, "I just want to keep existing. There are too many things I have to do for the living world for me to simply die or cow to the will of another." The reason he had told them this much was because there were still things about the Juubi's power that he had been keeping to himself. Things no one but him needed to know, at least for now, because at least one of his secrets would cause a panic.

Yamamoto stroked his long beard, "I have a proposition for you Uzumaki." He saw Naruto's eyes lock with him and could tell he had his attention, "We plan on giving Kurosaki Ichigo a position as an official Substitute Shinigami, however we have another proposition for you." Naruto's face remained stern as the old man continued, "How would you like to form a Frontier Division in the world of the living?"

"Frontier Division?" Naruto questioned rather suspiciously, "I don't want to take orders or work for anyone. I'm not going to be anyone's weapon to just point, shoot, and let annihilate."

"Nothing of the sort." Yamamoto said in an effort to clear things up, "I'm just saying that much of this current trouble with Aizen could have been avoided if the Soul Society had more eyes abound. There needs to be a group with no real standing orders, a group that can handle issues that spring up or call for assistance in case it becomes necessary. An ally in the middle of the world of the living. Imagine if Kuchiki Rukia would have had a potential safe area she could have gone to once everything had gone awry during her stay." Naruto opened his mouth to answer when Yamamoto spoke again, "Of course I have no authority to authorize such a thing."

Naruto almost fell out in the floor, "Well then why are you telling me this if you can't even put it together?"

"Because…" Yamamoto said, both of his eyes locked on Naruto in a firm glance, "While the only power I have to take note of is the Central 46, we still need to replace the Central 46. Which means that until then I take over their normal duties. I now only answer to the Spirit King himself… and if the issue arises I am sure that I can provide many valid reasons to let this happen. He may be particularly interested in you with your lifespan Uzumaki-san, among other things." Naruto blinked in confusion, "Now how does a 10 year trial period sound?"

Naruto thought for a moment. Ten years were nothing to him, and if he didn't like it he could just back out then, "Okay… here are some rules. Rule one; I don't take orders, from you, from anyone." Komamura bristled and moved to berate Naruto, but Yamamoto cut him off, allowing him to continue, "I will work with you, I will listen to things you have to say and we'll have a mutually beneficial relationship, but I don't work for you. Rule two; I pick the people on this 'division' you want me to head up. I won't be accepting your castaways or exiles or prisoners or whatever. Why do you want _me_ to do it anyway?"

Yamamoto returned to his kindly looking old man appearance, "You're not going anywhere for a long, long, long time."

"True…" Naruto admitted before continuing, "Rule three… or should I say condition three; you're going to tell me where that Aizen guy is. Yoruichi-chan told me he was in the Hollow plane Hueco Mundo, but I mean when you pinpoint his location. I want to know."

Yamamoto tapped his cane on the ground lightly, "We were going to tell you anyway. You would be an invaluable ally in the coming conflict with him."

Naruto nodded in satisfaction, "Rule number four… I don't really have a rule for that yet, get back to me, but am I going to get paid for this?" Yamamoto nodded and the ninja in Naruto was fully sated with the terms thus far, "Then I guess for now anyway we have a deal Yamamoto-jiji." Naruto said with a grin, but in the back of his head he felt a nagging feeling that he still had absolutely no idea what he had gotten himself into.

Yamamoto let out a short chortle, "It seems that we do… brat." He secretly enjoyed the scowl that crossed Naruto's face at being called a brat.

XxX

_My name is Uzumaki Naruto._

_Age: I thought we went through this already… I don't know!_

_Hometown: Anywhere I damn well please… or for right now at least, Karakura Town… I think._

_Likes: Ramen, every Shinigami female I've seen thus far because they are all super-cute, finding out exactly what the hell makes the world beyond ours tick, the buzz I get from activating Sage Mode in the Soul Society, picking on Ichigo and his friends… and everyone I can get away with it on, saying 'who's your daddy' to certain people around the Soul Society because I'm older than them, the cute look on Soi-Fon's face when I piss her off, the sexy smirk Yoruichi-chan gives me when she has a secret._

_Dislikes: I still hate waiting on ramen to cook, I still hate fresh raw vegetables, I still hate everything that I listed the last time but sprits are slowly getting off of that list of mine… some of them in particular more than others. I'm starting to hate Yoruichi-chan's sexy smirk that she gives me whenever she has a secret, because her secrets are usually unpleasant. And I also hate old men that are _still_ legitimately older than me calling me 'brat'._

_My name is Uzumaki Naruto and I still have no idea what the hell is going on. I know enough to smile and nod and go somewhere else to figure things out on my own or yell and bitch about it, but I've never been so grateful to be immortal as I have right now, because I think it's going to take at least a full lifetime for me to figure all of this stuff out about the world of spirits… and most of that knowledge is probably going to hurt me to learn._

_Oh well, a sage is supposed to be a wise man, a man of the world at one with all of nature and existence. I bet I'm further along on that than any other so-called 'sage' before me. I might not ever be as famous as the Rikudou Sennin of my time, but I'll damn sure have a tighter relationship with the afterlife, believe it!_

…_Goddamn it. I swear to Kami I am going to fix that no matter how many years it takes._

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**I have nothing to say worth speaking on. The next chapter should be with some good old character development fun and should set up some future stuff in this story, so I'll just leave it at that.**

**Kenchi out. I love you all… platonically of course… unless you're female and then maybe in the other way.**


	9. Sleep When You're Dead

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach, but if I did that would be crazy-awesome wouldn't it? I'd be all like, "Yeah, I own Bleach _and_ Naruto! I am Balla-Bron! Smell my ass world! Now watch me count my duckets and spend my cheese! Where the D's biatch!" And then someone would shoot me.

Yeah… that would be so sweet.

**Chapter 9: Sleep When You're Dead**

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Naruto sat in a guest room in Kuukaku's house on the floor with a piece of paper in his lap and a pen in his hand, "Let's see. Who do I want? They need to be able to see ghosts and the like, and they need to not be dead. That narrows it down a bit." He said to himself as he felt a cat hop on his shoulder, bringing a grin to his face, "Yoruichi-chan. You do know that every time you get into that form all I can think about is you being naked, right? Don't scratch me." He said sternly, turning to the cat who had her claws out before putting them behind her back sheepishly.

"So what are you doing in here thinking so hard Naruto?" Yoruichi asked as she jumped off of his shoulder onto the ground, "You're thinking so hard I think I can hear your brain cooking in there."

Naruto gave her a dry look and flipped over his notebook to reveal only Ichigo's name on the paper, "He's the only one I can think of that can and might help me. Of course he'd probably turn me down just to spite me… damn brat."

Yoruichi gave him a strange look, "What about the others?"

Naruto sighed, "I would have said Uryuu too, but I can't sense any power from him anymore. Did he lose it or is he really good at hiding it?" Yoruichi's downcast look told him everything, "He lost it…" Shaking his head he kept going through the list of Ryoka, "Well Chad is a maybe, but he doesn't seem to be all that into the fighting thing, he seems like a reactionary kind of guy. Not the type suited for the work I'm going to be doing. Orihime… she's gorgeous and I absolutely love her personality, but again, she isn't a fighter. Maybe I can have her on as a medic of sorts or something though." He shrugged, "Well, in the end it's up to them."

Yoruichi nodded before giving him a sly look, "Well you have them all figured out… what about me?" Naruto looked at her in surprise as she began to walk around him in a circle, stopping behind his back out of his sight, "Don't you give me that look. I'm strong, I'm willing to get my hands dirty on this, I'm experienced. Give me a reason that my name wasn't the first one to hit that page." He felt her transform and then drape herself over his back with her arms wrapped around his neck gently, "Well? Come on now Naruto, I'm waiting." She said sweetly with a smile right next to his face.

Naruto's eye twitched as he could feel every curve on her body pressed up against him, "Kami, I wish you wouldn't tease me like this Yoruichi-chan… it's so not fair. That should be the first reason you're not on the list, because you're an eternal tease." He felt her tighten his grip on him and decided to explain why he hadn't thought to include her, "I didn't think you'd want to do it. I thought you would stay here and rejoin up with the Gotei 13, or if nothing else keep working with Urahara."

Surprising Naruto, Yoruichi scoffed and nuzzled her cheek against his, "When I left I left all of my positions and titles behind. I would have to start from the very bottom if I came back and I'll be damned if I go back to school and work my way up from ground level all over again like some kind of chump. Besides, working with people like Kisuke and you is way more fun than being a Shinigami for them. He would probably even help you out too."

Naruto held up his pen, "So… I can mark you down as wanting to be on this little team of mine?" The dark-skinned beauty nodded happily, "Sweet. Now my team has sex appeal!" His grin turned rather lecherous, "So how should we celebrate the occasion of you offering your services to my little squad? I choose the 'have sex' option!"

Yoruichi let go of him and let him get a full view of her, in all of her glory, seemingly not caring as she held her hands on her hips, allowing her breasts to jiggle, "How about we pick the 'I get dressed, and you pick your jaw up off of the ground' option." She said, smiling as she took delight in the power she had over perhaps the strongest newcomer to the spiritual world she had ever seen, "Soi-Fon would kill you if she could smell you on me anyway. So us having sex would get you killed."

Naruto spoke in a dry voice, "I. Don't. Care. I've lived a good, long life and you're a damn goddess. I'd die for it." She watched her laugh and walk out of the room, "I'm not giving up Yoruichi-chan!" He yelled after her, "I'm going to win you over once and for all one of these days! And you will love me! And _make_ love _to_ me!" He thought for a moment and then added something, "And if Soi-Fon ever wanted to join in too that would be just okay with me, dattebayo!" He pinched his nose in annoyance and sighed, "Fuck… still?"

"Dattebayo?" He head Yoruichi yell out from elsewhere in the house, laughing loudly afterwards, "Aww… That's so cute! You have a little verbal tic! Kuukaku, guess what Naruto says from time to time when he gets worked up?"

"I don't know…" He heard the lady of the house respond before Yoruichi whispered to her, as if it mattered at this point. Kuukaku broke down in laughter, "Dattebayo? Are you serious, I thought it might have been something cool. Does that even mean anything?"

"Okay…" Naruto said, standing up and placing his list in a sealing scroll with his other possessions, "That's enough making fun of me. It's time to go somewhere where I can get some respect around here." He threw his sage coat on and left the house, having to pass by the two raucously laughing women that saw him and laughed harder. Hearing them call for Ganju was the last straw as he kicked it into high gear from then on out.

XxX

(Seireitei – 12th Division Headquarters – Shinigami Research and Development Institute)

Naruto arrived and Mayuri seemingly noticed the second he stepped onto the division grounds because within fifteen minutes of walking through the gates he found himself inside the research institute in a small room sitting on a medical table as a man with brown spiky hair, a few small horns in his forehead, and a lab coat over his Shinigami uniform checked something off on a clipboard, "Alright Uzumaki-san. In just a moment you'll be receiving your physical."

"Physical?" Naruto repeated inquisitively. That was why he was there? Why in the hell would he go all the way there for a physical, one he didn't need by the way, when there was a much more appealing option for a potential physical, "I could have gone to Retsu-chan for a physical! She's hot! Why am I sitting here for a damn physical? I'm as healthy as a horse… an immortal horse."

The man shrugged rather apologetically, "You volunteered for this the other day Uzumaki-san. Now the lieutenant will be here any moment to commence with the physical and primary experiments, if you need anything in the meantime I am Akon." He bowed to Naruto and left the room, leaving the blonde to pout to himself.

"I can't believe this crap…" He muttered to himself as he sat on the table with his arms crossed, looking around. There wasn't a damn thing in there except the table he was sitting on and a chair nearby, "This sucks. It's cold in here, and some weird lieutenant is going to come in here and poke at me. I hate trying to be helpful." She shut his eyes and tilted his head back to look at the ceiling when he heard the door open, "Oi…alright let's get this show on the road."

"Sorry to keep you waiting Uzumaki-san." A delicate female voice said, getting Naruto to turn his neck down so fast he got a miniature head-rush. He got an eyeful of a young woman with green eyes and black hair pulled into a braid going down her back with two bangs framing both sides of her face, a face that had a rather melancholic look on it. Her Shinigami outfit had rather loose sleeves, and came up far shorter on her legs than any other he had seen before, she had on white fingerless gloves as well, "Shall we begin?"

Naruto blinked and looked around her trying to see if there was anyone else that was to come in, "You're the lieutenant I'm supposed to have been waiting on?"

She nodded and bowed to him, "Yes, I am Kurotsuchi Nemu. Kurotsuchi-taichou's daughter and lieutenant of the 12th Division as well as vice-president of the Shinigami Research and Development Institute. It is a pleasure to meet you."

Naruto smiled at her and extended a hand, "Same here. I'm Uzumaki Naruto, so what am I here for Nemu-chan?" She seemed rather sweet. If he had a tail he swore it would have been wagging at this point. She looked at his hand and then back to his face, her expression never changing, "What's wrong?"

Nemu shook her head as she looked over a clipboard, "Nothing is wrong Uzumaki-san, why do you ask?"

Naruto blinked and retracted his hand, "Well, most people would have shaken my hand or something. It's alright I guess." He said as he watched her pace around slowly and go through whatever was on the clipboard, "So what am I supposed to do here?"

Nemu looked up at him from the clipboard and answered him, "First we'll need to take some blood to study."

Naruto nodded, "Okay, cool. Then what?"

"Then I was instructed to get your physical specs such as height, weight, age, and come up with a way to label you." Nemu said informatively.

Again, a nod came from Naruto as he gave her a comfortable smile, there wasn't anything too weird going on so far, "Okay, all of that is still easy except for the age thing. I don't think I can be exact. I don't really go year-by-year anymore. Is there anything else."

"Yes." Nemu said without hesitation, "The last thing meant to be collected from you is potential reproductive material. I was intended to assist you with that part in particular."

And with that, the smile on Naruto's face became rather strained as his mind battled with the potential prospects of what she said, 'What in the hell? Did she just say-?' He could have made his own conclusion on the matter, but he still had to ask her to make sure he actually had it right, "And by collecting my reproductive material you mean…?"

Not missing a beat, Nemu quickly answered him, "I am to engage in intercourse with you Uzumaki-san. It was meant to be the final thing, but if you would prefer, we could proceed with it first." She began to reach back to undo her obi when Naruto's hand stopped her, "Is there a problem?"

'Hell no! Let's do this!' That was what he _wanted_ to say out loud, but damn him and his chivalry, he had to quickly squash that line of thinking… what the hell was wrong with him? He was passing up a chance to get laid because it was wrong. And Nemu was cute, really cute as the majority of Shinigami girls he had met were, but she couldn't have been okay with this. "Nemu-chan." He said, keeping her from doing anything else, "You don't have to do that. Don't."

Tilting her head in confusion, the stoic girl blinked at him, "It is an order from Kurotsuchi-taichou. And I have read the issue of Seireitei Communication Monthly that you more or less commandeered. Wouldn't something like this be enjoyable to you?"

"Yes." Naruto freely admitted, "Yes it would. And I'm fairly certain that I'd wind up putting a smile on that pretty face of yours too, but this isn't right." Not only that, but if the guy was willing to send his daughter to do something like this for him he sure as hell didn't want to fork over any kind of reproductive stuff to him. No way in hell he was letting a lunatic like that get a hold of any potential future awesome, which is all that any offspring of his could ever wind up being… however the fact that he would outlive his kids never appealed to him thus he never attempted it, "Wait, could I even get a soul pregnant?" He shook his head, "Nevermind, don't answer that. I don't even want to know." He jumped up off of the table, "Where is this guy? He and I are probably going to have a problem or two."

Nemu looked at him impassively, "Very well. If you wish to see the captain then follow me Uzumaki-san." She said before exiting the room.

"Wait!" Naruto shouted after her as he pulled on his pants, "Let me get redressed first! I'm not walking around here naked! Hey!" It didn't take him too long to get his shirt and shoes on, allowing him to chase after her while he threw his sage coat back on. He quickly caught up and fell into step with her as she led him to where that weird looking captain he volunteered to do this for was stationed.

'Why does she look so detached all of the time? I don't think I _can_ get a smile out of this girl.' He thought to himself as they walked through the halls of the facility, "Whoa, what are those?" Naruto asked as they passed by a lab with a multitude of bodies that had the appearance of humans that had stopped being created at the muscle layer, "Freaky."

Nemu noticed what he was looking at and answered him, "Those are Gigai (Faux Bodies). They are how Shinigami conduct long term missions in the world of the living. After a Shinigami hosts one it takes on their appearance and can be seen by humans in the living world." She motioned to the lab they were passing, "We design them here. This is one of the things that our division is known for taking care of."

Naruto looked at the Gigai until they got out of looking distance, 'Fake bodies ready for a soul to inhabit huh? Orochimaru sure would have loved that idea. I'm surprised he never tried it.' Eventually they made their way to an office that was pretty dimly lit and had three computers, behind them a rather large formation of things that Naruto first thought resembled a pipe organ, "Oi, scientist-captain-man, I think that you and I have a gripe here."

Sitting at the computer, the man turned around with his rather skeletal visage, "Really, and just what sort of grievance do you have against me?" He said as he got up and walked towards Naruto.

The blonde of interest pointed at Nemu, "What's this about wanting to collect my seed? First of all I appreciate the sentiment of sending her because she's super-adorable, but then again I resent it on so many levels." He pointed to himself vengefully, "No one's making any more me's anyway. There can be only one!"

"I see…" Mayuri said in a rather disappointed voice, "Well I had intended to be nice about it and use one of your offspring as a test subject instead of you yourself. Collecting the blood and other things from you were just means of a control for the eventual experimentation, but you say that there can be only one so I'll have to experiment on you then." He said, not really as a threat, but as if it was already done.

Naruto backed away a few steps, "Yeah… about that. I'm not really too stoked about being stuck in some kind of observation cell being prodded and stuff so how about we _don't _experiment on me and I don't blow this place to smithereens trying to escape." He then pulled on his own cheeks, "Besides, there isn't too much special about me when it comes down to it. I'm a human."

"A human that claims to be immortal and has a rather high level of strange power." Mayuri corrected for him, getting him to step back a bit further, ready to bolt for the hills when the mad scientist turned towards Nemu, "You weren't supposed to tell him that you were intending to do such a thing to him you useless creature!" He raised his hand and released a backhand slap, however before it hit her she disappeared in a puff of smoke and a chair fell to the ground in her place.

"Don't do that." Naruto growled out lowly, holding Nemu to his side before letting her go, "What the hell was that all about? You don't just hit girls, especially girls that are supposed to be your daughter you bastard!"

Mayuri's ever present grin never left his face as he responded, "Nemu is my daughter, yes, my artificially created daughter. She can take a lot more damage than a simple tap like the one I was planning to give her. And I don't see how your opinion would matter seeing as how test subjects usually don't get an opinion on anything."

Naruto ran a hand through his hair, "If you lay a hand on me or you hit her in my presence again I'm taking the hand that you used right off of your body. Then you can study exactly how I kick your ass. We can run a test on that if you want to." He threatened.

Having known that Naruto had been fighting on more than even grounds with Captain-Commander Yamamoto during the turmoil in the Seireitei and having come out relatively unscathed in the process, Mayuri knew that Naruto was both willing to fight him here, and more than capable of tearing the place apart if he tried to simply grab him and capture him for study. He had just recently recovered from what had happened with the Quincy boy that had fought him and forced him to retreat and his body wasn't fully in condition for combat yet. He also didn't know enough about Naruto and his fighting ability to aptly go into combat with him.

No, a fight here would cause too much damage in his laboratory and would destroy too much research. For the moment he would just have to let Naruto's insolence slide, after all, he said he was immortal. That meant that he had all the time in the world to find some way to study the man, learn something about how he fought, and then he would capture him and learn just what made him tick. And from the way Naruto had sprung to his daughter's defense he figured he had a rather decent way to get some of this information on him.

Mayuri stiffly nodded to Naruto who had not taken his eyes off of him as he let his Reiatsu start to leak out at the scientist's silence. Naruto let the pressure ease up as he accepted this for the time being. Turning to Nemu he tried to give her a reassuring smile, "If you ever need some help or if you want to talk about something Nemu-chan just see if you can find me. I'm always willing to help certain people out."

Hook, line, and sinker. And Mayuri didn't even have to do anything to set it all up. As Naruto began walking away out of the building back through the halls, Mayuri called for Nemu, "Nemu it seems like I'll have a use for you after all. I want you to grow rather close to Uzumaki and find out how he goes about doing anything, everything, find out anything that you can. This is your new mission."

Nemu simply nodded wordlessly, stretching the grin on Mayuri's face further.

XxX

(11th Division Headquarters – Dojo Room)

Naruto was seated in the lotus position in the middle of the room, his shoes and sage coat off as he sat with his eyes closed. They finally snapped open as the members of the division that were present all sat in a single file line in front of him at a far wall.

After his little trip to the 12th Division, Naruto was in something of a foul mood and decided that if he was going to vent it might as well have been on a group of people who wanted to do nothing but fight anyway.

He stood straight up and pointed at the group of men, picking out three of them, "You, you, and you. All of you get up and take me on." He saw them argue about who was supposed to go first and he cut them off, "No, no. You're all coming at me at the same time. That way it's a little bit more fair. Now bring it on!" He barked.

"We only fight one-on-one in this division!" One of the chosen Shinigami yelled out to him, "Any other way would be dishonorable to us!"

"Fine then tough guy!" Naruto snapped back at him, "I was trying to make it fair so that I might take a hit or two, but if you're going to be that way then you can be first, now get in here!"

The Shinigami eagerly jumped into the fray, drawing his bokken, only to notice that Naruto was simply standing there with his arms crossed, "Do you need a weapon?"

Naruto shook his head, "Just attack me already. I'll be fine. I know what I'm doing, and don't give me any of that fair fight crap! My hands are the most dangerous weapons in existence! Now begin!" The man ran at Naruto and began taking swings with the wooden sword as well as taking attempted jabs at Naruto's belly, hitting nothing but air each time. After one stab at his torso in particular, Naruto spun out of the way and swept low with a spinning rear sweep kick, "Konoha Reppuu (Leaf Gale)!" The kick sent the man spinning on his back swiftly into the line-up of the other members sitting in the room, knocking more than a few of them out.

Naruto stood back up straight with his body set in his taijutsu stance, "Now anyone who wants to try their luck please come on down."

With that, one by one, the members of the battle-loving squad came in to attack Naruto who brushed them off relatively easily. One of them came in with a few vertical and horizontal swipes before being knocked unconscious by a flurry of uncountable punches to the face.

Another one slashed downward at Naruto, who caught his attack by the wrist and spun around to jerk him off of the ground and throw him into a wall, knocking him out. Trying to rush in and try his luck next, one man rushed at Naruto only to get dropped with a hard side kick to the stomach.

The blonde then ducked a swing coming for his head and ripped the attacker's belt off, pantsing him and distracting him long enough for Naruto to knock him out with a rising palm strike that landed right under his chin and lifted him off of the ground.

Naruto let him limply hit the ground and cracked his knuckles before catching a bokken in his grasp and pulling in the person who had swung it, "Rariatto (Lariat)!" He pulled him in and hit him right at the neck and under the chin with his bicep and the inside of his elbow, knocking him out.

Naruto watched the man hit the ground and shook his entire body out, "Hoo… Come on, who's next? I've got all day, and a whole can of whoop-ass for each and every one of you! Get a seated officer in here so I can get a fight!" He then felt a tug at his pant leg and turned down to see a little girl with pink hair in a Shinigami outfit, "Yes, can I help you? What's your name?" He said nicely to her, getting a smile from her.

"I'm Kusajishi Yachiru!" She said brightly until she was able to get a good look at his face. She then quickly scampered up his body and deposited herself on his back to grab at his cheeks and pull on his whisker-marks, "Whiskers!"

Naruto laughed slightly at the girl pulling on his cheeks. It was very common to him after the age of shinobi ended and clan markings and the like fell out of the realm of normality. Everyone loved the whisker-marks it seemed, especially members of the opposite sex, no matter the age, "You can call me that if you want to I guess Yachiru-chan." A shout of 'chance' from another of the 11th Division member gave way to Naruto turning to the attacker and glaring at him dangerously, releasing a level of Reiatsu that stopped him in his tracks, 'I can stop people just by bullying them with this stuff? Awesome!' He then spoke, scaring the attacker more than he already had been, "Not with the girl on my back."

"B-B-But she's the lieutenant!" The man cowered as he dropped his weapon and backed away.

Naruto blinked and dropped the crushing feeling of his Reiatsu and looked at the cute little girl on his back who was still pulling on his cheeks, "You're the lieutenant?" He asked her curiously. He had known that the Hitsugaya guy looked young and was a captain, but he actually carried himself as an adult, albeit one that looked like a kid. This was different… way different.

"Yep!" Yachiru replied cheerfully as she hopped over the back of his head and landed on the ground in front of him, "You're really strong Whiskers. Ken-chan is going to like fighting you."

"Ken-chan?" Naruto asked, "Who the hell is Ken-chan and why would he want to fight me?" A powerful aura set over the dojo originating from behind Naruto who turned around to see the massive captain with the bells in his hair and the eyepatch, "Oh, Zaraki Kenpachi." He looked at the height and weight discrepancy between them and frowned, "…Fuck." He then burst into smoke as a log that had been cut in half landed on the ground.

Kenpachi had a bloodthirsty grin on his face as he saw the log hit the ground, "Where did he go? And where did he get the log from?"

"That is not the question you should be asking!" Naruto yelled from just outside of the dojo window as he leaned on the sill, "The question you should be asking is how to make the log appear for you." He gestured grandly to the world around him, "There's always a log! But you have to _believe_ that it's there!" He lowered his voice to a whisper, "…You have to believe…" He then ducked as a few hair follicles were separated from his scalp, "Oi! That was close you jerk!" He screamed like a girl when he dodged another swing and took off running as the large captain barreled through the window with Yachiru on his back laughing gleefully.

"Why are you running?" Kenpachi asked as he continued bounding after Naruto, "Why don't you fight me like you did the old fart?"

Naruto turned back. Kenpachi wasn't as fast as him. If he had to run, he probably could have and gotten away, 'Okay, let's play.' Naruto grinned at him, a good fight was never really something he liked turning down, "Because, this _is_ how I fight!" Naruto turned around and threw a kick that Kenpachi blocked with one arm, "Strong." He then disappeared in a blur before Kenpachi could cut through him.

The large combat-loving captain grinned as he took several hard punches that he couldn't see to the face and the body. He let Naruto land those punches to see how strong he was, and from the bruises beginning to form on his mostly bare torso he liked the results, 'It took Ichigo nearly getting killed before he could even start hurting me.' He licked his lips evilly, "Yachiru, hop off of my shoulder would you?"

"Yay!" She shouted as she jumped off and landed on a nearby rooftop, "Ken-chan is going to play!"

Before Naruto could hit him again, Kenpachi took a swing at his side that resulted in a loud clang, signifying that he had been blocked by Naruto. Naruto found himself being pushed back and also saw that his kunai had been cut into with the sword, "Damn… you're so lucky I have my good swords stashed in the world of the living." He said with a grin.

Kenpachi returned the grin with one of his own, "That's a shame. You really could have used one right now as far as I can see!" He said as he began to run at Naruto and drive him back into a nearby wall, destroying it.

"Wah!" Naruto was thrown from the rubble and debris before rolling to his feet with a kunai in his hand, a tag attached to the back, "Eat this then!" Naruto threw it at Kenpachi and watched as he caught it in his hand.

"Is that the best you can do?" Kenpachi taunted, "Where's the power that put the old fart Yamamoto on edge? I thought you were dangerous!"

Naruto smirked and pointed at his head, tapping his temple, "This is the most dangerous thing about me. Boom." The tag attached to the kunai he threw at Kenpachi finished burning down and exploded in his hand and face, "I'm supposed to be unpredictable!" He then started cackling madly. Cackling that was matched by a figure in the smoke from Naruto's explosive attack, "You still want to fight don't you?"

"Absolutely!" Kenpachi shouted in glee as the smoke cleared to reveal nothing more than a few slight singe marks on his clothes, "Let's see what's more dominant! Your unpredictability or my insanity!"

Naruto cursed to himself as the large man charged back towards him, 'Note to self; against stronger souls explosive notes do all of nothing except make pretty distractions.' He rolled under Kenpachi's opening slash and got back to his feet inside of his guard where he unloaded a heavy right hand to his body that put a smile on his face when he heard him exhale. Looking up at the man's face however, he still saw nothing but a grin, "Nothing? Really?"

Kenpachi shook his head, "Oh it rattled a few ribs around for sure, but that's nothing to me! You'll have to fight me with intent to kill to even come close to wounding me bad enough!" He then grabbed a hold of Naruto's arm, "I know how to fight you now, you like using space to get angles on opponents and jumping back out of range once you do your damage! Well then how about this!" He went to slash at Naruto who he still had a hold of only to find that Naruto caught his strike with his one free arm, now both of their arms were bound and useless, "You're not as flimsy as you look Uzumaki."

Naruto bared his teeth as he strained to hold back the powerful man. He was like a rhino, he was so strong, "I'll take that as a complement." He headbutted Kenpachi in the chest three times only to give himself a headache. He looked back up at Kenpachi who was still trying to cut him but still couldn't move, however Naruto's arm was shaking dangerously. Naruto glared defiantly and kept headbutting Kenpachi again and again, "Come on you big bastard! Drop the sword!" Headbutting Kenpachi was similar to headbutting a brick wall, it gave him a headache but he knew it hurt. He could feel Kenpachi's ribs and breastbone giving way every time he struck with his skull.

"Those are good hits!" Kenpachi yelled, seemingly happy that Naruto was doing him harm on the inside, "Now for mine!" He finally overpowered Naruto, as if he had been playing before, and cut Naruto across his chest.

Naruto grit his teeth in pain as he refused to yell from the slash, "Fine! Now it's my turn again!" He formed a blue ball of energy in his newly free hand and slammed it into Kenpachi's body, "Rasengan (Spiraling Sphere)!" He saw the attack begin to carve into some kind of yellow aura around Kenpachi that he eventually broke through and started doing damage to his body directly as he started carving into the man and wounding him.

Kenpachi's grip on Naruto's arm refused to loosen as he rooted his feet into the ground through the pavement. He was not getting blown away with this attack, 'This guy… I like this guy.' He thought as he lifted his sword and slashed into Naruto's smaller frame again, grinning madly when he didn't let go of his attack. Seemingly being given the green light, Kenpachi began cutting freely into Naruto's torso, leaving wounds all over his body.

Naruto's force on the Rasengan grew weaker and weaker with every hit he took from the powerful captain, 'I really wish I would have put some Kage Bunshin up for Sage Mode before I came here! How was I supposed to know that I was going to wind up fighting juggernaut-man here! Fine then, I guess he can take me trying to kill him a little bit!' From Naruto's sleeve, a hidden kunai emerged that Naruto used to pump wind chakra into, "Hien (Flying Swallow)!" Naruto slashed at Kenpachi with the blade and cut his sword arm before using the weapon to stab into the arm that had the hold on him, forcing him to let go, finally allowing Naruto to get away.

The two squared off with many of the 11th Division paying close attention to the battle. Naruto took note of the wounds on his body and found that thankfully they were healing rather quickly. They had even stopped bleeding. Kenpachi had blood flowing from a rather deep looking spiral groove drilled into his chest and had a deep wound going through his left wrist, but the battle-hungry look on his face hadn't wavered in the slightest, "Okay, that's enough fun for one day."

"You're running away?" Kenpachi said, almost in disbelief. He was enjoying the battle, Naruto hadn't backed up a step since the fight started. He hadn't run away, he hadn't cowered when he had been caught, he hadn't quit or even accepted defeat as a possibility for even a moment. And in addition to that, he looked durable as hell. He wasn't even breathing hard or faltering a bit from the wounds he had taken, and Kenpachi knew he had cut deep from the amount of blood that was still steadily dripping from his Zanpakutou, "How disappointing."

Naruto grinned at him, categorizing his wounds as mere trifles at the moment, they were slashes. Stabs would have been far more serious and then he would have been a bit more inclined to be serious, "Well, I'm not really at my best here." He admitted, "Yeah. I would destroy too much stuff around here if I started going harder. I tore apart a third of a forest fighting Soi-Fon and Yamamoto-jiji and I blew up the Soukyoku thing, remember?" He saw Kenpachi's grin grow more insane than before, 'Something tells me that I shouldn't have reminded him that I can do way better than this.'

"Then we'll have to do this some other time Uzumaki." Kenpachi relented, "You and Ichigo. Now I have two people that I'm just dying to fight again." He laughed in anticipation of an all-out fight against both of them, especially now that Ichigo's Bankai was common knowledge, "You'd better keep getting stronger."

Now Naruto could have been responsible and simply accepted his new barbaric stalker, but he wasn't feeling too responsible right now, "Yeah, well you should probably beat Ichigo first. He's a good warm-up for me. Once you beat Ichigo I'll find you and fight you, and you won't even have to look for me." He said with a thumbs-up before running away with Swift Release. He didn't really want to throw Ichigo under that bus, but to hell with that. He didn't need any new people that wanted to kick his ass, he had a lifetime full of that already and enough _new_ enemies in front of him and on the horizon.

"Bye Whiskers!" Yachiru yelled after his blurring image, "Come back and play again sometime!"

XxX

(Later – 4th Division Headquarters – Captain Unohana's Office/Quarters)

"Is there something in the water in this place or something Retsu-chan?" Naruto asked rhetorically as he sat on the woman's desk, bandages on his bare torso from a quick round of medical work, "First there's that Mayuri guy, who I want to punch in the face, and then there's Zaraki Kenpachi who seems to want to fight me to the death at full power now."

Unohana smiled at him as she sat at her desk, "We have a few eccentric cases abound in the Seireitei. You learn to live with things around here. As a matter of fact you actually aren't doing that bad of a job at fitting in." She looked at a slightly exposed part of one of Naruto's wounds with a scrutinizing eye, "You have a very high speed level of healing Uzumaki-san."

Naruto grinned at her and poked at the wound she was looking at, prompting her to slap his hand away lest he make it worse, "It's more along the lines of damn near being regeneration. I heal really fast and I don't get scars. I don't know if I could lose a limb and grow it back, but thankfully I've never had to test that out." He joked to her.

"Do you think that I would be able to examine and study it?" She asked before blinking as Naruto quickly scuttled away to the other side of the room. She then remembered what was said at the last captain's meeting, "What's the matt-? Oh… Kurotsuchi-taichou?" She got a nod from Naruto, "I see. I wouldn't worry too much about it. He has to actually find a way to capture you and keep you for anything to be done to you."

Naruto gave her a deadpan look, "You know, that doesn't really make me feel any better about an insane scientist after my manly juices among other things." He then decided to ask her a question, "Hey, weird question Retsu-chan. I'm a human so do you know whether or not I could even get a soul pregnant in the first place?"

The smile dropped from her face as she took some time to think about it, "You know, I have no idea. I don't have any recollection of that being in our records so I wouldn't know. I would assume you could." She shrugged, "I would guess that it would be something to think about. Do you have any offspring in the world of the living?"

Naruto rapidly shook his head no, "No way… How could I do something like that? I could never. I would outlive any kid I wound up having by years and years. Besides, the world doesn't need another ninja like me. They do a good enough job of killing themselves without more human weapons."

"Is that all you think of yourself as Uzumaki-san?" Unohana asked sadly, but with some hint of anger in her voice, "You cannot rightfully call yourself nothing more than a weapon, that's not fair to you. From what I've seen of you you're a very kind and considerate person. Yes, you are very powerful, but to be so cruel to yourself as to label yourself a weapon… here you would be a Shinigami… not a weapon. You're not that much different from us, and we're more than just weapons." She gave him a small smile, "Just look at me, I'm a healer, not just a fighter."

A laugh came from Naruto, "Yep, I'm feeling better just looking at you beautiful." He walked over to her desk as he put his cut-up shirt back on, "And you don't have to call me Uzumaki, you can call me Naruto if you want to Retsu-chan."

"Whatever you say Uzumaki-san." Unohana said pleasantly, but letting him know that she wasn't about to get that familiar yet, bringing fake tears to his eyes, "However, do you think that you're really ready to leave the HQ yet? Your wounds are still rather fresh." She said with a slight threatening tone.

Naruto smirked and pulled his shirt up, patting his bandages, "Retsu-chan I'm probably the easiest patient you're ever going to have. It takes an obscene amount of punishment to actually kill me, and I'll heal from pretty much anything that can be thrown at me in a single day at the longest." He pulled his shirt back down, "I'd be surprised if these little baby scratches lasted the rest of the night without finishing healing up, but thank you for being worried about me." He grabbed his sage coat and threw it over his shoulder, "I wish I could wash this right now though. I don't like having a bloody jacket."

Standing up and extending her hand to take it from him, Unohana surprised Naruto with her following proactive comment, "I could always have my division wash it for you and return it if you'd like. It's no problem since they will be washing loads of things anyway."

Naruto beamed at her, "Thanks a lot Retsu-chan!" He handed it to her, "That jacket is really important to me. I've had it a long time and I take really good care of it… when I'm not getting it stabbed, slashed, burned, and shot through…" He said mostly to himself, however a giggle from Unohana said that she had heard him as well, "Anyway, I know you and your division will fix it up. If you need a favor from me then feel free to ask me anything."

She waved him off, "I will keep that in mind, and I'll most certainly take good care of your jacket Uzumaki-san… dattebayo." The look on his face when she said that last line to him was a combination of horror, embarrassment, and anger. The look on his face didn't subside even as Unohana's melodious laughter rang out through the halls of the 4th Division Headquarters.

"I'm going to go hang out with Ichigo for a bit!" He said as he almost stormed out of her office temper-tantrum style, this doing nothing to stop her from laughing at him, "Can't believe it! I lost my cool in this place just as quickly as I got it." He grumbled to himself, the Shinigami in the halls giving him a wide berth as they could feel the ill-intent rolling off of him.

"Oh come back Uzumaki-kun!" Unohana said in between her bouts of laughter, "It's okay, I think it's rather cute!"

XxX

(That Evening – 2nd Division Headquarters – Soi-Fon's Office/Quarters)

Soi-Fon sat in the middle of a rather vacant room that she used to practice the motions of her Hakuda and to meditate as she was currently partaking in the latter. Suddenly her eyes snapped open and narrowed, "And what are you doing here again Uzumaki?" She asked in an exasperated voice, though she didn't really have a problem with it, "Do you want me to kill you for trespassing?"

"Come on now Soi-Fon." Naruto said as he suddenly appeared from his camouflage jutsu, standing against the wall of the room with his arms crossed as he smiled at her, "I've done stuff way worse than just drop in to say hi for you to want to kill me for this." He walked over and sat down in a similar manner right next to her, "So how was your day oh captain-my-captain?"

"It was fine…" She sighed out in a bored manner as she shut her eyes and pretended to be trying to get back into a meditative trance. The attitude she exuded was one that projected that Naruto was annoying her, but the truth was that she didn't mind his company whatsoever. She knew he was actually skilled and not really so goofy when the times required it, and it was actually nice to have someone that actually wanted to talk to her from time to time. The fact that he almost never took it personally when she pulled her Zanpakutou on him either was a plus as well, "But I've heard that you've been making a little ruckus with the 11th Division."

Naruto frowned as he followed suit with Soi-Fon and shut his eyes to fake trying to achieve a trance. He was simply sitting like this in case she legitimately wanted to meditate and he was disturbing her, "So you heard about that huh? Kami, that Zaraki Kenpachi is kind of crazy isn't he? He wants to fight me at full power."

"I want to fight you at full power as well." Soi-Fon admitted, cracking an eye to give a rather shocked Naruto a stern glance, "I will not accept the results of our battle as the extent of the conflict. I didn't lose, you didn't beat me." She stopped his reply by opening both of her eyes, "I will admit that you were more powerful than me when we fought, but that won't be the end of the issue. We will fight again one day, I will return the favor that you gave me, and maybe you'll be graced with the sight of my Bankai the next time around or maybe my improved new special technique Shunkou once I finish training it with Yoruichi-sama."

Naruto was going to say that it was a bad idea for them to fight again, but once he began to focus on the tranquility of the room he noticed that there wasn't a single hint of ill intent from Soi-Fon when she said that. That brought a smile to his face, "Well anytime you feel like playing, feel free to look for me Soi-Fon. I'll play with you anytime if that's what you really want… as long as you don't kill me while we fight. We're supposed to be friends."

She shut her eyes again and resumed her fake meditation to hide the fact that she was actually enjoying the conversation, "Well if you survive me attacking you from the shadows when I find you I'll think about sparing you after I embarrass you and defeat you."

"Well…" Naruto said, a toothy grin on his face, "How about this? Every time you try to get the drop on me and fail I'll give you a big hug. And that will be how we say hello from now on." He surprised her by wrapping a single arm around her shoulders and pulling her smaller body closer to his in a one-armed hug, "Because you know I love you my little bee." Naruto purposefully ignored the growing look of annoyance on Soi-Fon's face and instead chose to take the increasing red hue on her face as something more positive. How wrong he was.

XxX

As members of the 2nd Division walked through the HQ near Soi-Fon's office and quarters they hurried on past her door as the clear sounds of crashing and conflict as well as angry curses from Soi-Fon herself and insane laughter from a male voice rang out. They had immediately deduced the male voice as that of one Uzumaki Naruto and after how he had taken to creating chaos all over the Seireitei and picking on their captain, putting his own life at risk in the process, they decided to stay out of it.

Omaeda, Soi-Fon's lieutenant, knocked on the door carefully and stuck his ear to the door to hear the sounds of crashing and yelling from within, "Um… captain? Are you alright in there?"

"She's fine!" He heard a gleeful male voice answer in reply, "Soi-Fon is just showing me how much she loves me right now! Oop, I think she's about to try and give me another love mark!"

"Jinteki Shakusetsu, Suzumebachi (Sting All Enemies to Death, Hornet)!" Omaeda stepped back when the power of Soi-Fon's Zanpakutou was released, "Hold still Uzumaki and just die already!"

A sound of metal clashing with metal sounded out before the sounds of the fighting stopped, however Naruto spoke again, "Soi-Fon _I_ know you love me, _you_ know you love me, and I can guess that your entire division knows that you love me. So just stop with the games and come out with it already."

Omaeda heard her growl before it suddenly stopped, "Okay then. You're right Uzumaki. I love you so~~ much..." From the way she said that, Omaeda could believe that she was saying that tauntingly with a smirk on her face, "…_Dattebayo_."

Naruto gasped in shock and horror, "She fucking told you too?" He yelled before a solid blow and a grunt sounded out along with the noise of his body hitting the wall was made, "Ugh… I need to go deal with this little problem I'm having today with a certain kitty-cat. Bye Soi-Fon! Bye Soi-Fon's lieutenant-guy!"

A sound of a burst of speed was followed by Soi-Fon quickly opening the door to her office with Omaeda backing off roughly ten feet. She gave him a glance before walking down the hall with the Shikai of her Zanpakutou still active, "I'm going for a short exercise run. I should be back before midnight Omaeda. You're in charge until I return."

"You've-!" He said before she vanished in a burst of her Shunpo, "-Got it captain…" He stared at where she had been before scratching his head and picking his nose, "Huh… maybe that Uzumaki guy is right. I've never seen her so fired up for anything."

XxX

(The Next Day)

Naruto never thought he would actually have wanted Yoruichi to stay away from him. If he had told himself that on the day he had met her then he would have slapped the taste out of his own mouth, however today was far from fun for him to be around Yoruichi, "So Naruto, are you going to get into anymore fights before we leave today, dattebayo?" The dark-skinned goddess asked him with a humored smile on her face.

All Naruto wanted to do was shut her up, somehow. But he couldn't catch her to _make_ her shut up. Stupid Shunpo… why did she have to be faster than him? "Yoruichi-chan…" Naruto whined pitifully, "Please stop talking about that. I almost never say that anymore. Only when I'm pissed off or get really worked up somehow."

This brought a smirk to her face as she sidled up to him and bumped him with her hip, "Oh, so thinking about me got you all worked up now did it?" They were walking towards the former site of the Soukyoku to be taken back to the living realm after Naruto had gratefully collected his sage coat from Unohana at the 4th Division HQ, "What about me could possibly get you flustered hmm?"

Naruto grinned at her, "I could start listing things but the first half dozen things I'd describe would be parts of your anatomy." He then frowned, "Did you have to tell everyone about the 'dattebayo' thing though? I would have been taken way more seriously around here if you had managed to keep that little piece of information to yourself. I mean, even Retsu-chan laughed at me. Not with me, _at _me. She'll never think I'm cool if she thinks of that word every time she thinks of me." Yoruichi kept the look of a cat who just swallowed the canary around him and he relented, "Oh who am I kidding? I can't stay mad at that face… you're so sexy!"

"I already knew that Naruto." Yoruichi said matter-of-factly before she reached somewhere on her person and handed him a note, "This is from Yamamoto-sotaichou. I don't know how he kept finding me to give me these things when he could have just found you. You weren't that hard to pin down in one place, were you?" Naruto just took the note with a sly smirk, getting her to palm her face, "Nevermind, you probably were." She noticed his face turn thoughtful, "What's the matter?"

Naruto pocketed the note, "Well Yamamoto-jiji wants me coming back here regularly with updates on how my team is going, so I'm probably going to be working Urahara a lot more these days since he has the only Reishihenkanki (Spirit Exchanger) in the world of the living that I know about." He then blinked and gave her another look of contemplation, "Do you think he'd want to be on the team, or do you just think he'd rather yank favors out of me unofficially?"

Yoruichi rubbed her chin in thought, "Probably the second one just to mess with you even if he _did_ want to join. Did the note say anything else?"

Naruto nodded, "He's going to accept my request. I'm going right into Hueco Mundo when they all figure out Aizen's location."

Yoruichi raised an eyebrow. This concerned her extensively she had to say, "What about a way to get back?"

"Don't need one." He answered quickly before a sharp blow to the back of his head forced him to cover up and crouch down, "Ow! Why would you hit me? What did I say now?"

Yoruichi kicked him in the side and pushed him over onto the ground, "You are _not_ going into Hueco Mundo just like that because you're angry at Aizen! Do you think you're the only one that wants to get a shot at him?" She pressed her foot on him when he tried getting up off of the ground, "Even if you could get there you wouldn't be able to get yourself back! Can you open a Garganta?"

"What's a Garganta?" He asked, getting her to press harder on his chest in response, "Ow! What? That was a legit question!"

She nodded and spoke, "That's the point exactly. You're strong. You're really strong, but Aizen is too, and he knows more about the situation than you do. Why do you want to fight him so badly anyway? You weren't even manipulated the way the rest of us were by him."

"I can see that someone like him is the lowest of the low." Naruto said seriously, "From that little interaction I had with him I could tell that he's the kind of guy to turn existence into his own little chessboard. And his ambition, whatever it is, to become 'God' like he said, is going to cause a lot of upheaval, which is going to lead to fighting, which is going to lead to many people being killed for what? For one man's grievance against nothing?" He rubbed Yoruichi's leg gently to try and calm her before removing it from his chest, "I don't know what he did to make you so angry, because you seem madder than just for him escaping from here, but he's obviously been playing too many sides against another."

Yoruichi looked down at him with softened eyes as he started standing up and dusting himself off, "Naruto…"

Naruto cracked his neck and walked over to where the rest of the Ryoka were standing, waiting to be sent home through the Shinigami portal to the world of the living. He turned over his shoulder and looked at Yoruichi, "I'm telling you this right now Yoruichi-chan. When I was young I was too weak to stop things like what this Aizen guy wants to do before too much damage was done, and even now there's a chance that I can't put this guy down, but you know what? That doesn't matter. The first swing at that piece of crap I can get I'm taking, because I've learned that some people just do not need to exist in the world."

"Yea-. Bu-. Naruto you-." Yoruichi didn't know what to say to the look of serene reassuring confidence on his face. On the desolate, windy terrain of Soukyoku Hill, Naruto looked like some kind of superhero as his open jacket blew in the wind along with his golden locks. All she found herself able to do was to smile back at him, "I don't know what you're going to do, I don't know how you're going to do it, but you know that you have my support. Besides, I owe you one insane, utterly suicidal trip to somewhere I'm not guaranteed to return from anyway."

Naruto's grin finally resurfaced as he grabbed her hand and walked with her to the unopened portal where the others were waiting, "That's the spirit! Besides, wherever that Hueco Mundo place is you and I can just pretend that it's a romantic getaway or something!"

"You're so stupid…" Yoruichi thought to herself, tightening her grip on his hand, 'Stupid, but for some reason I really like it. And you're going to need my help because if anyone knows things about the Soul Society that someone in your position will need to know, it's going to be me.' As she looked over at him she couldn't help but wonder, why was the sun hitting him like that and making him look so powerful? Was she losing her mind or was it just that 'nature responds to me' thing he told her about before, 'You're going to need my help, and I think I'm going to be more than happy to give it to you.'

She smiled as they finally got over to the others, Ukitake, who was there with Rukia to open the portal, handed Ichigo some strange pendant. Yoruichi knew exactly what it was and could only laugh to herself as it seemed that Yamamoto wanted to believe in Ichigo as well, "Now everyone, how about we all go home?"

XxX

(1st Division Headquarters - Captain Yamamoto's Office/Quarters)

Sasakibe Choujirou, Yamamoto's lieutenant, a man that appeared to be middle-aged with short, silver hair looked at the aged leader of all Shinigami forces, "Do you really think it was wise to give the Kurosaki boy free reign to be a proper Substitute Shinigami. More so to allow that Uzumaki to form his own group in the world of the living?"

Yamamoto took his underling's skepticism about his decisions on Naruto and Ichigo without any offense intended. He understood that he was simply worried of the consequences of doing so, "We have become predictable Choujirou." The older man admitted, "This allowed Aizen to play us against one another and take advantage of the Soul Society's chaos generated by our lack of ability to bend and change with the situation and work his schemes without our knowledge to the wiser." He stroked his rather long beard, "I have a feeling that the decisions I have made on those two will provide the perfect wild cards that we need to weather this coming storm."

* * *

**It is far too late… or early depending on what 2:30 a.m. is to you, for me to be witty and clever so I'll just leave it at this for all of my loyal readers. Next chapter will start the new arc and things will be getting into a swing of sorts. The meat of the story will begin at this point with divergences and the like and I hope it'll be fun for you guys.**

**Hope your week doesn't/didn't bite. Until the next time around, Kenchi out. I have class at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow.**


	10. ATeam? STeam

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. My broken hand has not stopped or slowed my flow by any stretch of the imagination, and if nothing else it has given me the pity benefit with my lady friend so I've got that going on too. Everything's coming up Kenchi right now! I should break my hand more often.

**Chapter 10: A-Team? S-Team**

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After returning from the Soul Society and being picked up by Urahara and Tessei on what could only be explained as a flying carpet, the youngest members of the group, Ichigo, Chad, Uryuu, and Orihime were dropped off at their homes. Naruto and Yoruichi went back to Urahara's place being that Naruto didn't have anywhere to return to anyway.

After arriving at Urahara's, the group wound up sitting around the table with the hat wearing man staring down his fellow blonde with a grin on his face, "Well? How was it? Did you bring me anything? Got a postcard? Any messages for me?"

"Nope." Naruto said firmly before rethinking his statement, "Oh, actually yeah, I do have something for you."

Urahara blinked in confusion, he had been joking. He didn't really expect anything from the trip to come back for him, "Really? What is it?" A fist to the face that knocked him across the room was what he received from Naruto.

Naruto stood up with a tick mark on his head and his hand formed after an angry punch. He took a series of deep breaths and sat down, "That was for everything since we met, up to and including introducing me to the Visoreds and sending me half-cocked into the Soul Society without so much as a word of warning or any advice."

Urahara sat up with a bloody nose, "And that's all I'm getting for that?" He said disbelievingly, not really too upset about just one punch, a punch that left him conscious and coherent, "And what about Yoruichi? She's half the reason you even went in the first place."

Naruto wiped Urahara's blood off of his knuckle, "Meh, I'm going to get her back for that later too." He ignored Yoruichi's squawk of indignation and kept talking, "Besides, since she was the one that requested me to do this she has to pay me now. I would say that this qualified as an S-rank mission." He started doing math on his hands, "Okay 1 million ryo was the going rate for an S-rank mission back when I was a kid, that exchange rate would be ten yen for one ryo." He pointed firmly at Yoruichi, "You owe me 10 million yen."

Yoruichi's jaw dropped as she started sputtering nonsense before being able to form coherent words, "10 million? What the hell are you talking about? I can't afford that!" She stood up and pointed back at him accusingly, "And aren't you rich? Couldn't you do something out of the kindness of your heart for once?"

Naruto shook his head, "I'm a mercenary Yoruichi-chan. If I don't charge you for stuff like this then I'll have to give other people breaks, and I'll lose my clientele." He ignored her yell of 'What clientele?' and kept reasoning, "I can give you a friend's discount though. 50% off, that means you owe me 5 million now. Isn't that better?" He felt the yellow eyes of the former noble glaring at him as Ururu handed him a cup of tea, "Just because I'm loaded doesn't mean I can start doing things for free. The economy is tumultuous these days." He said as he calmly took a sip of his beverage.

"I'll show you tumultuous you stingy bastard!" Yoruichi said, cracking her knuckles before Naruto held up a hand to stop her, "What now?"

"You could always work it off." Naruto said, "You're supposed to be on my team that I'm building anyway, just do this one mission for me and we're all even again."

"Fine…" Yoruichi said, ready to be rid of her debt that she had placed herself under, "What do I have to do, sleep with you?" He noticed his eyes flicker to hers, "I'm not sleeping with you over a debt."

Naruto rolled his eyes, "I would never ask you to do that anyway Yoruichi-chan." He said in a heartfelt manner before he turned serious and pointed at her, "You're not going to be able to use that excuse. When I wind up sleeping with you it's going to be because we have something between us that made you feel it was appropriate, not because you owe me something."

Yoruichi crossed her arms with a twitching eye, "Are you done?" Naruto nodded and took another sip, "Then what's the mission?"

Naruto lowered his cup and smiled, "Urahara I'm going to need a very, very good Gigai."

"Huh?" The store owner said in confusion before elaborating, "I'm sorry, I tuned out after you said she had to do a mission for you. I assumed that would mean 'sleep with you' and I kind of went scatter-brained for a second imagining me in your place." He felt Yoruichi's death glare shift to him and he immediately stood up, "But you said Gigai! I heard that! Follow me sir, we have a wide selection of Gigai to choose from!" He grabbed Naruto's arm and dragged him out of the room.

Yoruichi looked at the open door as the only ones left in the room now were her, Tessai, Ururu, and Ginta, "Hey wait! What do you need a Gigai for? You're human already!"

XxX

"No." Yoruichi said firmly.

"Yes." Naruto replied brightly, Urahara behind him, happily holding up a blank Gigai, "This is your mission and requires a Gigai, unless you'd like to front me your pay when we start getting it for our work." He suggested.

"I don't think I even care that much." Yoruichi said turning away from them, "The fact that you're going to even try to have me do… _that_… Ugh, I don't think I could bear it!" She said, shivering slightly.

Naruto wrapped his arms around her to stop her shivering, "Yeah, I know. I'm going to be doing it too, but that's why I need you there with me. So that I don't die of boredom or kill someone while I'm there. Keep me in line."

Yoruichi whipped around in his grasp and looked up at him, "But _why_? Why would you possibly need me to go with you for what you're about to do? I don't want to go anywhere, let alone all the way around the world."

Naruto frowned, "Because it's going to be a long fucking trip and I need you to come with me so that I don't get bored. Don't you want to learn more about me anyway?"

"Why can't I just keep going as a soul?" She said pouting, "Or as a cat? I could go as a cat, that would be just as good right?"

Naruto shook his head, "Nope, I can't talk to a soul or a cat in public without being seen as totally insane. And besides, as far away as we're going, I need a sexy companion to make myself seem more awesome."

Urahara appeared in front of her, waving the Gigai, "Come on Yoruichi… he's paying top dollar for this Gigai. You know you want it… well, you know that I want him to buy it so that you have it. Come on… it's going to be a good one."

'I hate using Gigais!' Yoruichi chewed on her lip as they kept pestering her about the Gigai until she finally caved, "Fine! I'll use the damn Gigai and I'll go with you on your stupid trip to nowhere! Where are you even going anyway?"

Naruto wrote out a check to a salivating Urahara, "I'm just going to swing by somewhere and grab someone that may or may not be useful for this. He seems like he would be if my memory is correct."

Urahara was mumbling to himself about how much money he had just made before he stuck the check inside of his clothes, "Um Uzumaki-san I have one request of you. Whatever it is you're going to do…" He reached elsewhere and grabbed Jinta, shoving him in Naruto's face, "Take this guy with you."

Naruto raised an eyebrow, "Why do I want the angry, red-haired, bat-swinging runt to go with me?" He said before dodging a pair of tiny legs that kicked out at him.

"I'll 'runt' you!" Jinta said, squirming in Urahara's grip.

Naruto chuckled, "Ooh, he's got a little bite to him. Fine. I'll drag him along but don't cry to me if he winds up dead or something. Doesn't he have school?"

"Don't you?" Jinta replied, being set down on the ground.

"Technically I do, but I'm never going to go." Naruto said, "And it's summer vacation… oh, answered my own question." He scratched his head and looked at Urahara, "Why do you want me to take wonder-brat? He's going to cramp my style."

"What style?" Yoruichi asked as she held the Gigai she was going to have to use and stared at it distastefully, "What possible style could you be talking about?"

Naruto grumbled in reply, "Don't worry about it." He looked down at Jinta who was staring up at him with the usual punkish look on his face, "Are you going to be a good brat or am I going to have to tape your mouth shut all the way on the trip?"

Urahara interjected at that moment, "So where are you going and why are you even going there in the first place?" He asked Naruto, "You don't seem like the kind of guy that really goes anywhere with any real purpose in mind."

"I need a team." Naruto said, "I'm supposed to be building something of an observational first-response team here in the world of the living since all of Aizen's plans apparently danced around every single person in the Soul Society." He looked at Urahara with a grin, "You probably wouldn't want to but I'll ask you anyway; do you want to help me out?"

"Maybe…" Urahara said, holding his fan in front of his face, "What am I going to get out of it?"

"Money…" Naruto started listing things, "…A better rapport with the Seireitei… Money… You get to hang out with me… Money…" He stopped listing, "I'll have more when things get underway I guess. I'm doing this because it has to be done."

Urahara thought about it for a moment as he paced around, "I need to think about it. Things are going to be getting a lot more hectic soon." He stopped walking around and snapped his fan shut, "I'll tell you what. You go on your trip and come back and I may have an answer for you."

"Cool." Naruto said, "I'll leave tomorrow and should be back in four days… hopefully with everyone else intact as well. Oh, and I'm going to need another Gigai as well. The best you've got, because I've got an idea."

XxX

(Two Days Later)

Naruto, wearing casual clothes for travel; a dark-blue button up shirt and a pair of black slacks and shoes, lead Jinta, in his normal t-shirt and shorts, and Yoruichi, who was wearing a casual purple dress and a black short jacket.

The three were walking through a particularly deep section of woods that Naruto seemed to be blazing as if it were ingrained in his memory about where he was trying to go. Yoruichi didn't have much of a problem following him all over the wildery area, although it was a long walk it was very calm. Jinta on the other hand had been pestering them both all trip and both were pondering how much trouble they would get into if they left him there. Either way, Urahara was going to get it when they got back to Karakura Town.

"Why oh why did you agree to take the kid?" Yoruichi asked Naruto as she watched him seamlessly navigate their way through a densely wooded area of the forest.

Naruto shrugged as he kept leading the way, "A little adventure is good for a kid like that every now and then." He looked back, "Hopefully we lost him back there… he should be fine if we leave him here right? When I was his age I probably could have made it home from a place like this."

Yoruichi let a lightly amused smile cross her face, "So why are we even out here? You said you wanted to come out here to check for something, but you never said what it was."

Naruto smiled back at her, "Can you feel that?" He said as he jumped up a small rocky outcropping and held his hand out for her to take.

Yoruichi gratefully accepted his help, her gigai body was very well made, but she was as weak as a human in this form. Once he pulled her up and steadied her she actually could feel something in the air, "Actually yeah. I can. It feels like a very dull underlying of power. Where are we?"

"Nowhere but a simple national nature park Yoruichi-chan." Naruto said as he continued to lead her along, "But back when I was a teenager this place was actually a place that belonged to my friend's clan, and he used it to make sure that a certain someone was bound here for all of eternity."

Yoruichi raised an eyebrow, "Then why are you coming here? Are you actually going to let him out?" Naruto nodded, "Why? You just said he was supposed to stay here for all eternity. Is this person immortal like you?"

"Yep…" Naruto said before backtracking a bit, "Well not exactly like me but he is immortal, in pretty much every sense of the word. I can't kill his body, it's already dead. But I can still handle this guy." He looked around before letting out a yell, "Jinta! Where are you?"

"I'm over here you lousy old fart!"

Naruto got a tick mark on his head as Yoruichi let out a giggle. They continued on towards where they heard Jinta's voice as Naruto let out some angry mutters about respect and how he wasn't old. Eventually they came to a clearing where Jinta was sitting on the grass waiting for them and seemingly staring at some kind of spirit that was bound to the ground by a chains centralized in a small hole in his chest, "What the hell is this single spirit doing here in the middle of nowhere? It's like he's a Demi-Hollow or something, but he's the most chill Demi-Hollow I've ever seen."

Yoruichi looked at Naruto, 'Of course he knew someone that was turning into a Hollow… why wouldn't he?' She thought, fighting the urge to facepalm when Naruto greeted the spirit.

"Hello Hidan!" Naruto said brightly at the soul who turned to him and went wide-eyed, "Yep, I'm back again!"

"Oh man…" Hidan said dejectedly. He was dressed in a frayed and tattered black cloak with red clouds on it. He reached off to the side where there appeared to be a large scythe with three blades on it off to the side, but it seemed to swim just out of his reach, "Damn it I forgot… The scythe is too far away from where my physical body is or else I would have cut this loud-mouthed runt down before you got here." He plopped unceremoniously on the ground and glared at Naruto, "So what do you want this time kid? The last time you were here 20 years ago you stood here and gloated about how you kicked the Akatsuki's ass and blah, blah, blah." He grunted, "So what do you want now?"

"To get you out of here." Naruto said calmly, "I want you to work for me. I can get you out of here and get you back to living in the real world again, and seeing as how you didn't age just like me after all of these years you're still immortal."

"Thank Jashin…" Hidan replied sarcastically, "It was cool until right when I got buried here by what's-his-face. I survived for around two years and then I died. My body needed nutrients… Jashin-sama couldn't take away that little disadvantage. And then I didn't go to hell or heaven or whatever, I was just stuck here in the stupid sacred forest... alone... for… I forgot how long it's been."

"Over 2000 years." Naruto answered him, "I told you that last time I was here."

Hidan's eye twitched, "I haven't killed a single person in over 2000 years? How have I not been excommunicated from Jashin-sama?"

"Jashin?" Yoruichi said as she walked closer to Hidan, "Jashin-sama?" She analyzed Hidan's face closely, unnerving the man, but there wasn't really anything he could do to push her away from him, "What is that? And how have you been here for 2000 years and not turned into a Hollow yet? It should have happened after one year."

"Jashin-sama is my god. He is the embodiment of slaughter and violence… I don't know what a Hollow is sexy lady." Hidan said absently, "Anyway, what are you doing hanging out with the stupid blonde kid?"

Yoruichi backed away from him and jerked her thumb over at Naruto, "For now anyway I'm supposed to be working with him and I'm more or less his guide of sorts to the Soul Society, the place that souls go when they die." She turned to Naruto, "Are you really so sure we can use him? He doesn't seem like he'd be easy to control. How would you even get him out?"

"In a minute Yoruichi-chan." He said before focusing on Hidan, "So how about it? You get to fight tough people that are going to stomp a mudhole in your ass and might be able to kill you for real. And you might just get to meet Jashin for real if he's really a Hollow. What does he look like?"

Hidan smiled as he hadn't gotten to talk about Jashin in thousands of years, "Jashin-sama has the appearance of a normal human white skeleton. He wears an ornate crown on his head, bracelets on his wrists, and has a royal purple coat with black fur lining it. Every time I activated my curse I saw that regal sight, the embodiment of death... except for the last time when I lost that battle here."

Yoruichi looked over at Naruto and silently mouthed the word 'Hollow, probably Vasto Lorde.' to him, getting a nod from him, "How are you going to get him out?"

Naruto walked over to Hidan and looked him into the eye, "If I let you go you're going to work for me. I'll pay you, but you can't go around just killing people anymore." He saw Hidan's mouth open to snap at him when he continued, "But you'll get the chance to fight a ton of enemies, and you'll even get the chance to see Jashin firsthand once I find a way to reach his realm."

Hidan's eyes sparkled at the prospect… although he wouldn't be able to express his faith anymore. But none of that was his fault. He'd tell Jashin that once he saw his god firsthand, "Fine. Get me out of here and I'll do whatever the hell you want."

"Cool." Naruto said, "Cut the chain Yoruichi-chan."

"Naruto!" Yoruichi yelled at him abruptly, grabbing his cheeks in her hands like he was a child, "If I cut the chain he'll painfully turn into a Hollow, and I can't perform a Konsou (Soul Burial) on him. Even if I do the Konsou he'll go to Rukongai and we'll have to look for him all over again. That could take years. Besides… he's bound to this land or else he would have probably become a Hollow millennia ago."

Naruto let out a huff, "Fine, I'll do it myself." He said as he started making hand-seals, "Your way actually would have been more pleasant for him, he likes pain. Gedou (Outer Path)." Naruto's Rinnegan activated as an ethereal, demonic looking head emerged from a purple border at Naruto's feet, lifting him off of the ground as he stood on it, "Sorry Hidan, this is going to suck until I can get you what I need."

"What the hell are you doing?" Hidan asked before the tongue of the head grabbed him tightly and ripped him from his chain before it swallowed him whole and receded back into the ground.

As the head disappeared, Naruto turned back to Yoruichi and Jinta with a satisfied look on his face, "Alright I've got what I came for. Let's head on home." The other two watched Naruto shove his hands into his pockets and whistle a jaunty tune as he proceeded to walk away, "Come on you guys, I only rented that car for five days. We have to go back now."

Jinta pointed at Naruto with a shaky finger, "Did he just call up some weird creature to eat that guy's soul? Who the hell is he?"

Yoruichi just herded the boy along to follow after Naruto, "Just go. The more questions you get answers to the more pop up later."

XxX

(Two Days Later – Evening – Highway Back to Karakura Town)

Yoruichi sat in the passenger seat of a black convertible that Naruto had rented to drive across the country and had her eyes locked on Naruto as he kept his own blue orbs on the road, "So are you going to tell us what the hell we just saw you do back there?"

Naruto panned his eyes over to her for a moment before looking back forward, "I'm pretty much the bridge of balance in the world of the living. I can interact with souls and I kind of could before I could freely see them. Now I can do more than just rip souls out of the bodies of others though." He playfully tapped Yoruichi on the nose, "I could pull you right out of that Gigai of yours if I wanted to, right now."

Yoruichi smiled at him before looking in the back to see Jinta asleep on the seat. She turned back forward and let out a yawn and shut her eyes to catch a few z's, "How could a human have amassed so much power? Even before you knew what you were really doing you had the power to affect life and death. I can't imagine having a role like that… something that's so far beyond what your species should be able to do."

"I wasn't really that far ahead of everyone else at first…" Naruto said to her quietly in case she was really trying to get to sleep, "There were a lot of humans that were really powerful. They were scary strong people. If they were spiritually aware then I could only imagine the trouble a lot of them could have given the Shinigami and Hollows." He looked over at Yoruichi and gave her a smile, "I know that all of this stuff is going to be more trouble than I've had in more than 1000 years, but meeting people like you guys has really made me think that it'll be worth it." He reached out to her and rubbed her cheek with the back of his hand, "I haven't had anyone other than myself to fight for in a long time."

Yoruichi grabbed his hand and kissed it, "Don't just think that goes one way. I'll fight for you too Naruto." She noticed him giving her a strange look, "What? You act like a pervert and an immature idiot sometimes, but when you're alone or around me you're actually really deep. Do you really trust me that much?"

Naruto shrugged his shoulders, "You're what I would call my first real friend in hundreds of years."

"Likewise." She replied good-naturedly, "When I left the Soul Society the only friend I was able to keep in contact with was Kisuke. And then after 100 years there was you. You're very good company Naruto, and you're cute." She lay her head down on the armrest between them, "And I keep thinking that you're going to be way more important than anyone will ever know."

Naruto took a chance on pissing her off or not and ran his free hand through Yoruichi's hair getting a surprisingly content sigh from her, prompting him to keep doing it, "I'd like to say that you're wrong, but the last time I said that I ended up saving the world… so I'll just agree for now." She mumbled a sleepy reply, "Goodnight Yoruichi-chan. We'll be back in Karakura Town by the time you wake up."

XxX

(The Next Morning – Karakura Town – Urahara Shop)

Naruto, Yoruichi, Urahara, and Tessai were all in the training area of the shop with Urahara holding a blank Gigai, "So what exactly are you going to do?" The shopkeeper asked his fellow blonde.

Naruto grinned, "I'm going to grab someone's soul and I'm going to slam it into that Gigai, and that person is then going to work for me… because that's how I recruit." He scratched his chin, "I'm going to have to train him to fight Hollows and stuff, but hey, it should work, right?" Naruto made a set of hand-seals, "Gedou (Outer Path)!" Naruto's summoned demonic head appeared and spat Hidan out, only his appearance wasn't what Naruto figured it should be, "Oh shit…"

Yoruichi, Urahara, and Tessai looked at the remerged Hidan strangely as a crushing Reiatsu settled over them all, freezing them in place for a moment. Eventually the curious hat wearing men pointed at him, "Uh, is he supposed to look like that? Tessai, get a Kidou ready… like the strongest Bakudou you've got... right now."

"Kind of? But hold up on that for a second." Naruto replied curiously, tilting his head as if a different perspective would make his old enemy appear any different, "Did you ingest any blood? I don't see how you could have, you're a soul. Still… um, what's going on?"

"What?" Hidan asked testily as he noticed everyone staring at him strangely, "What the fuck are you all looking at? Am I that interesting?" He asked rhetorically, getting a resounding 'yes' from everyone around him, "Really? How?"

"Well…" Naruto said before making a hand-seal, "Maybe it would be better for you to see firsthand. Henge no Jutsu (Transformation Jutsu)!"

"No fucking way…" Hidan went wide-eyed at what he saw Naruto transform into. Hidan had the appearance of his face being an actual skull, his slicked back silver hair still existed on top of his head as he had actual eyeballs and his normal purple-pink eye color. He still had on his beaten up black robe, but that was because he hadn't changed his size. From what could be seen of his body his skin was entirely black with white parts of his skeleton in specific areas sticking through. His entire ribcage outline could be seen over his black skin for instance, along with a hole in the middle of his chest. His left arm also had three blade looking plates jutting from the bottom side of his forearm and his right arm had a long, thin looking blade-like plate coming from the knuckle of his middle finger, "I look… So badass! What is this?"

Yoruichi stepped back slightly before speaking to Naruto, "Are you telling me, that you broke his Chain of Fate when you yanked him inside of that thing? And when he came out he was a Hollow? Not only that, but he turned into a damned Vasto Lorde?" She grabbed Naruto by his collar and pointed at Hidan, "How? That doesn't just happen! That takes years!"

Hidan was still marveling over his new appearance, "Is anyone going to tell me what's going on here or what? Man I look so awesome!"

Naruto was doing the same, poking at Hidan and seeing if he was real or not, "Yeah, someone tell me too… How do Hollows even get to being Vasto Lordes in the first place?" He was then joined by Urahara who decided to join in on the analyses of Hidan's new Hollow form with a notepad.

Urahara was scrambling down Hidan's appearance… while he was still tame for the time being anyway, "Gillian class Menos are made of tons of Hollows. Only those that have a particular soul that can assert dominance have the potential to evolve to the next level of Adjuchas… then they have to devour an obscene amount of souls to stop from devolving and even possibly evolve further to Vasto Lorde. I think it takes another requirement, but I don't really know what that is."

Naruto decided to ask Hidan himself, "Hidan I've never had my soul pulled out by the Gedou, so can you tell me what that was like in there? Maybe that would help us understand."

Hidan then glared at Naruto, "You have… so many freaky monsters in there, it's not even funny. I couldn't even count them all. From the moment you shoved me in there to the moment you took me out I was fighting these ugly monsters, all with weird masks. There were some huge ones the size of massive buildings, and then some that looked more like deformed humans… Long story short, I fought through all of them right up until you pulled me out. I didn't even know I had been changing in appearance the entire time, honestly it felt like I was one with Jashin-sama again the entire time, it was a blur. A bloody, bloody blur."

"How many did you kill?" Yoruichi asked him, 'If he can't remember much that means he must have devoured them as well. To evolve in just 2 days he must have killed an obscene amount of Hollows… and have already been one of terrifying power in the first place.'

"Sooo many…" Hidan replied somewhat wistfully, "Man blonde demon-kid was so spot on when he said he'd get me tons of fools to slaughter… I'm definitely working for him now. There were so many left too. It was like an endless flood of them."

Naruto blinked blankly, "Okay… Then the Gedou has tons of souls in it from when Pein used it, or the original Rikudou Sennin… and they were all in there so long that they turned into Hollows because time is super distorted in there seeing as how they were all intact, that's my theory and I'm sticking to it. I wish I had known that a long time ago. At least I've never pulled anyone's soul out and kept them in there like I did with Hidan before now."

Yoruichi palmed her face, "You turned your first recruit into a Hollow… He's a mindless killing machine now!"

Naruto gave her a look with a raised eyebrow, "He seems the same to me." He turned to Hidan, "How do you feel Hidan?"

"Like I have a barely restrained bloodlust only held back by the fact that it's really inappropriate right now to kill you, I can feel how strong you guys are." He said seamlessly before shoving Naruto and Urahara off of him, sick of being prodded at, "Still doesn't mean I won't do it anyway if you don't back off."

Naruto and Urahara caught themselves and steadied their balance before Naruto poked the former Shinigami captain with his elbow, "See, he's fine. He was like that all the time back when he was alive too." Hidan nodded in agreement, "He would just randomly kill people all the time for his religion."

"There's a reason for that." Hidan admitted, "The only way I really stayed immortal was by killing people like that… and activating my curse. I really don't feel very different at all. I mean, there's a part of me telling me to kill you all, but it's not really any different from when I was alive after the ceremony that made me immortal took place." He pushed his finger into the hole in his chest, "I'm going to miss the stabbing myself in the heart thing. It never killed me."

Yoruichi stared at him wide-eyed, "So you really _were_ a human touched by a Hollow. Your Hollow hole is where your heart used to be, and if you could stab yourself there when you were a human you must have been developing a Hollow hole the entire time."

"Alright!" Naruto yelled at last, "Enough messing with Hidan! He's not berserk and set on killing us all-!"

"-Yet." Hidan added absently.

"-Yet." Naruto repeated with a light glare to the infant Hollow, "So he's still cool. And if he ever feels the urge to kill overwhelming then I'll just pull him into the Gedou and he can kick some more ass. It's simple." He grabbed the nearby Gigai that Urahara dropped nearby and held it up steady, "Now I'm going to-."

"Are you sure that's going to work?" Urahara asked him once he realized what was about to happen, "I've never seen anyone put a Hollow into a Gigai before."

Naruto and Hidan looked at each other before the Hollow spoke, "I'm a soul ain't I? Why can't I go into it?" He asked.

Before Urahara could think of an answer, Naruto activated his Rinnegan and his hand was surrounded by a black aura, "And that is all the reasoning that I need for attempting this. I do stuff that no one has ever done before all the time. I'm a trailblazer!" He said as he grabbed Hidan by the face and slammed him into the Gigai, watching as it took the form of Hidan's human body, "And now we need to get him some clothes because nobody wants to see that." Naruto turned away from Hidan, covering his eyes like pretty much everyone else.

Hidan looked at his human form (naked) and smirked, "Sweet. Heh heh, this is awesome. And I don't feel like killing you all anymore than usual…" He noticed them all giving him a dry look, "Right, I'll work on not wanting to kill people so much anymore… but can I go back into that Gedou thing soon? That was great."

"Yeah, yeah." Naruto said, "If he's a Vasto Lorde and that's supposed to be the strongest kind of Hollow he'll be fine, plus he'll need the practice in battle won't he?"

Urahara was rapidly writing in his notebook, "The Gigai steadies the volatile forms of the more powerful Hollows, keeping them from having to devour other Hollows to keep their level of strength. Hence the lack of the empty feeling in Hidan. This is a major breakthrough, it's seriously important." He ran over to Naruto, "I'll definitely join your team if stuff like this happens to you all the time. And as long as I can study Hidan here."

Hidan had just been handed undergarments, a black shirt, and blue jeans by Tessai, "As long as I get paid and get to beat up more of those Hollows I don't give a damn what you do with me. It's my job now."

Urahara went over to Naruto and shook his hand, "Then you've got yourself a handsome scientist/Shinigami/humble shopkeeper on your team Uzumaki-san. Hidan's Gigai is the kind that will suppress his Reiatsu from those that can sense it since he clearly can't control it himself and it would alert far too many people. This is so exciting!"

Hidan finished getting dressed and smirked at his human appearance, "Alright, I'm human for the first time in 2000 years I'm hungry as hell. And there's only one thing I want to eat!" He yelled ferally, getting others to look at him, prepared to fight in case he was ready to devour their souls, "Spare ribs! Let's go Uzumaki-brat, you're paying!" He said, strolling his way out of the training room.

"And once again I find someone older than me to call me a brat…" Naruto sighed and shoved his hands in his pockets as he slowly followed after his former enemy, "I have to go take care of this guy and make sure he doesn't fuck up on his first day back in the world again. I'll catch you guys later." He walked past everyone, stopping at Yoruichi before giving her a quick kiss on the cheek, not saying another word as he left.

Urahara grinned and slid up next to a rather stunned Yoruichi with his fan in front of his face, "So what was that all about huh?" He asked in a teasing manner, "The new guy's getting all sweet with you isn't he? And you didn't kick his teeth down his throat after he did it?"

Her stunned look dropped and her face took on a more playfully prowling appearance, "Now why would I kick his teeth down his throat unless I didn't want him to do what he just did? I guess the game is finally afoot Na-ru-to… You're going to fall for me before I ever fall for you, I'm Shihouin Yoruichi damn it."

XxX

(With Naruto and Hidan)

Naruto and Hidan were walking down the street casually with the latter eating a full take-out tray of spare ribs that were keeping him docile enough for Naruto to tell him about the work that was to be done and lay the ground rules of the future, "Okay so you can't just go off and kill anyone or else an entire force of people will come and kill _you_, there are way less places to hide out when you do that because pretty much the entire world is settled. There are very few open concealed areas to turn into hidey-holes and the like. The forest I picked you from is one of the good ones left."

"So how strong are we?" Hidan asked through a mouthful of food, "You know, as far as humans go… because it was actually pretty crowded at the top when I got buried." Hidan had found that his Gigai could use chakra, but his reserves were very low when compared to his original body.

Naruto quickly answered him, "I'm number one by a serious long-shot. As far as humans go, with you in that Gigai you should be around number two if not number two outright because you can actually use chakra, and you're probably going to start making it so that you can use _more_ chakra while in your Gigai. You won't be able to use any ninjutsu in your Hollow form though, there's no physical energy for you to manipulate."

"I already know how I fight as a Hollow." Hidan said, continuing to eat as all of the people and traffic in the streets passed them by, "Man, the future is noisy… but yeah, it's kind of instinctual… not that much different from how I'd go berserk to get someone's blood when I was alive, plus I have a ranged attack too, you want to see it?" He asked, rather excitedly as it was clearly one of an extremely destructive nature.

"Um… no." Naruto replied in a dry manner, "Because I know that you would just shoot off a big-ass Cero (Hollow Flash) and blow ten blocks of this city to hell. I'm glad you don't know how to get out of that Gigai yet."

Hidan blinked in realization as he stopped eating, "Yeah that's right! How am I supposed to fight if I can't even get out of this body? The Hollow-me would tear this wimpy human-me to fucking shreds! Chakra or not!"

Naruto raised his right arm firmly in front of Hidan's face, "All I have to do is slap you on the back of the head with the black glowing hand I threw you in there in the first place and then you can fight. That'll have to do until Urahara gives me a Gikongan (Artificial Soul Pill) so you can get out all on your own without my help." He then let out a sigh, "I'm sorry though. Were enemies a long, long time ago but I never wanted to turn you into a Hollow."

Hidan began laughing, "You're sorry? Why are you sorry Uzumaki-brat? This is everything I could have wanted!" He said in a satisfied manner, "If I hadn't been bound to that sacred site I would have gone to hell… wasn't looking forward to that. It would have been nothing but personal torment, no one to kill. And that Soul Society place you told me about, don't make me gag… a place like that would have been torture for me. But now I'm free, I have a cool new form and more power than ever, and the instincts I've always had have a purpose now! I think I was made to be a Hollow in the first place, and I even get the chance to maybe one day see Jashin-sama so that I can properly thank him for the gift he bestowed upon me all those years ago that my human body still has."

"What?" Naruto said, "That's not your same body."

Hidan smirked and pulled up his shirt to reveal a poorly bandaged wound over his heart, "I know. While you were getting the food I tested it in the bathroom with one of your kunai that I swiped… hurts so good brat."

Naruto looked at him with a twitching eyebrow, "I can still kill your soul."

"Not the body though!" Hidan replied ecstatically as he threw away his tray in a nearby trashcan, "So where are we living Uzumaki-brat? Unless you're going to mooch off of the guy with the bucket-hat."

"I'm handling that now." Naruto said confidently.

XxX

"When the fuck did you buy this?" Hidan asked, slightly stunned at the size of the place Naruto bought. It was an old six-story office building not far from the restaurant where they had gotten food. It was in a rather run-down, abandoned part of town, but neither of them cared too much at all, the privacy was just icing on the cake. The place was totally vacant but for a pair of ninja the place was perfect to set up shop, especially with Naruto's plan for a team of sorts.

Naruto looked at the place, smiling at the purchase, "I had my clone look for the place when we were getting food and I was showing you around. I wrote it a blank check to fill in once it found a place and it did not disappoint. I know what I like apparently. There's like no one else around either, that's perfect. Now I just need to get Urahara over here to set me up with that cool training place he has under his shop and in the Visored's place."

Hidan walked around the bottom floor and looked back at the blonde that had bought the place, "How did you afford this building and how are you going to furnish it?"

Naruto shook his head and walked past Hidan to check out the upstairs, "Aside from the fact that the place was dirt-cheap, I'm rich. Actually rich would be an understatement. I've been alive roaming about for centuries upon centuries. Do you really think that I haven't made a ton of money? I'll have spaces filled out in no time, now come on, we're going to go pick offices/rooms. I've got dibs on whichever one is supposed to be for the boss."

XxX

(Three Days Later)

Naruto sat on the roof of his new headquarters of sorts, simply meditating. The place was remarkably quiet although there was no nature, something that Naruto had gotten used to with the changing of the world since his youth.

"So this is where you've been hiding since you came back from that little run to the Seireitei?" The voice of Shinji broke through Naruto's meditation, however he knew the man had been there. He could sense him as he came closer, "So what are you and that weird silver-haired guy doing all the way out here doing nothing?"

Naruto opened his eyes and stood up to face the de facto leader of the Visoreds, "Setting things up. Speaking of which, how would you like to work with me?" Shinji raised an eyebrow in confusion, "That Aizen guy was able to run circles around the Seireitei higher-ups, and whatever he did to you might have been prevented if a group that didn't have to cow to the Soul Society norms existed. I'm supposed to be that group."

"And Yamamoto is letting you do this?" Shinji said skeptically with his arms crossed, "That doesn't sound right."

Naruto dusted the back of his pants off, "He was the one that asked me to do it. I'm not under his command. I'm not under any kind of order from him. This is a separate entity from anything in the Seireitei. I'm in control. I'm getting up to speed really quickly about all of the things I need to know in my position, and I want you and the others to work with me."

Shinji sighed, "No deal Naruto." He said, shaking his head, "It's still too close to the Gotei 13 for us. You're a good guy, but this is still something we don't really want to deal with."

Naruto frowned visibly at his answer, "I was going to go after Aizen once I found a way to get to him, I'm still going. I just hoped that you guys would be up to being on my side once everything got started."

"We'll see Naruto." Shinji said, adjusting the hat on his head, "If we stick our necks out too far they might get cut off you know? Aizen was the one that forced our Hollow powers onto us. He's the entire reason that we were forced to leave the Soul Society, if we hadn't we'd have been executed. Having Hollow powers is the ultimate taboo. We are on your side though."

Naruto nodded and placed his hand on the man's shoulder, "Same here. If you guys ever need my help I want you to call me. You guys are good friends." He then smirked, "I also think I know someone that you're all going to want to speak to. Has Urahara told you about a little someone called Kurosaki Ichigo yet? Yoruichi-chan thought she was able to keep his Hollow powers away from me, but that's something she can't hide."

A chuckle came from Shinji, "He has. We're going to wait until school starts back up for him before we try to do anything though. Do you think the kid will let us train him though?"

"Fuck no…" Naruto said, laughing at the prospect, "He's going to fight you all the way. He doesn't want that power. Good luck with that."

"Actually…" Shinji said with a grin on his face, "There is something you can do for us that might end up with us working with you. A gesture of good faith if you will."

Naruto went frozen for a moment, "I don't really like the way you worded that. This is going to be something I'm going to hate doing isn't it?" Shinji's grin grew further as Naruto's brain tried to quickly process what it was that the man wanted him to do, finally settling on the only option that would make sense in context with their conversation, "No. I'm not going to do it, there's no way." He said crossing his arms in an 'x' pattern, "I'm the leader of a fledgling unit of fighters and I have to babysit a newly turned Hollow that used to be my enemy 2000 years ago. There's no way I'm going to go to school at a time like this."

Shinji's was highly amused at how Naruto shot down going to school so swiftly, "And you think I want to be caught dead there? The only reason I'd possibly be okay with going to school would be because of all of the cute girls there in the school uniforms." He trailed off as he saw Naruto's face pondering his last statement, "You want to go now don't you? Pervert."

Naruto glared at him lightly, "You're calling me a pervert? Half of you and your crew are all perverts, and I swear Hiyori's hiding some kind of latent streak of it because she's too defensive whenever something like that is brought up."

"You would know considering what you did the day before you left…" Shinji muttered to himself before he was grabbed by Naruto, "Oh, you don't remember what you did?" He said with a sly grin.

"No I don't remember!" Naruto shouted in reply, "Does it have anything to do with why I woke up naked? And what does it have to do with Hiyori?"

Shinji waved it off, "Oh, it's better if you don't remember it. Her too, otherwise she might hunt you down and kill you." He snapped his fingers, "Hey, that's it. I can just blackmail you into going or else I'll tell Hiyori what you did when you were smashed."

Naruto was about to viciously argue and possibly throw the man off of the roof of the building before he took the time to think about how violent Hiyori was _normally_. If what Shinji was saying was true, then what he was planning to tell her would piss her off more than anything Naruto had previously thought possible, and Naruto seemed to have a problem with avoiding angry women, "All I have to do is go until I can shove Ichigo your way right?"

"That's all you have to do." Shinji said, "And you still have another month until you have to go. It should be simple for you 'Mr. Immortal'. And drop by sometime, everyone misses you."

Naruto scoffed, "Yeah, they miss beating me up." He let a small smile come to his face, "Tell them I'll be by soon. I just have to get all of this stuff in order first. I'm building this thing from scratch you know."

"Will do." Shinji said as he calmly walked off of the roof into mid-air away from the building and Naruto, "Catch you later Naruto."

XxX

Naruto and Yoruichi, for Urahara, were trying to ascertain exactly what had happened to Hidan inside of Naruto's Gedou. Yoruichi had come over, marveled at the job that Naruto's clones were dong at fixing the place up, and made her way to the roof so that they could get down to business, "So what do you remember happening in there?" She asked.

Hidan sat, pondering the chain of events that occurred after Naruto dropped him inside of the Gedou, "Well it dropped me inside of this place that was filled with freaky silvery trees. Trees so tall I couldn't climb them to get to the top, then I felt a ton of pain and blacked out."

Yoruichi nodded, "That must have been your Hollowfication. Go on."

Hidan did as instructed, "When I woke up there were all of these wimpy monsters just hiding behind the giant trees staring at me until I stood up and asked them what they were looking at."

Naruto and Yoruichi gave him a dry look as the new Hollow's boss looked at him, "I'm getting the feeling you said more than that."

Hidan rubbed the back of his head sheepishly, "Okay, some offensive slurs and threats of disembowelment were made. But then they started attacking me and that's when all hell broke loose and I started running through them like my scythe through… some soft gelatinous material with not much give to it. Eventually stronger ones showed up, and I killed them too… then everything just starts blurring together."

Yoruichi took in all of this information, "Strong enough to butcher a seemingly unlimited wave of Gillian class Menos, and even a few Adjuchas from the sounds of it right off the bat." She turned to Naruto and smirked, "I guess you were right about how strong a few other ninja of your time were." She then turned back to Hidan, "And for the last week you haven't felt the need to go and kill anyone? No hunger or anything?"

Hidan shook his head, "Again, not anymore than usual. When I was alive I felt the same all the time, I don't feel any different. And if I'm hungry I'll make a sandwich." He finished jokingly.

Naruto finally spoke up, "I need to go into the Gedou and see what he's talking about."

Hidan immediately raised his hand, "I'm going too!" He quickly said, "I haven't killed anything in a week Uzumaki-brat."

"I'm so proud of you." Yoruichi said sarcastically before turning to Naruto, "Why in the hell would you want to go in there? That place will be teeming with Hollows."

Naruto put his cheek in his hand as he explained why, "Because as the current Rikudou Sennin it's my job to know what exactly goes on inside of my own technique. While Hidan's the only person I've used it on like that, Pein used it on tons of people. If there's another whole plane of existence in there I have to know exactly what it is." He saw her giving him an even look that showed she wasn't entirely convinced, "I can spit myself back out on this side when I want to leave. I've never been inside of it before but I've seen it done with Pein's other bodies."

"It doesn't hurt." Hidan added, "Well it doesn't hurt until you wind up on the other side and fall to the ground."

Naruto started to walk downstairs to his office to get some things, "And on that note I'm going to go grab some stuff and then me and Hidan are going to go on into the Gedou and check it out."

"Wait." Yoruichi said, stopping him at the entrance to the stairwell back downstairs, "I'm going too. As long as you're sure you can get us all back out." Naruto gave her a confident nod and kept walking, shutting the door to the lower levels behind him.

Hidan chimed in after Naruto left, "The Gedou thing will just appear and snap you back up and spit you out on the other side. He can summon it here or there since it appeared there too." He said, believing his input would make her more inclined to go along, "Of course if you don't go that's just fine with me too 'sexy lady that has a crush on Uzumaki-brat'." He grinned at her when she glared at him, "You can't kill my human body."

Yoruichi's glare turned to a smirk, "My name is Yoruichi, and Naruto's going to pull you out of your immortal body when he uses his Gedou."

"Shit." Hidan said as he trudged past her down the stairs, "I keep forgetting, the body is immortal but the soul isn't."

XxX

(Naruto's Office/Living Quarters)

A few minutes later, Yoruichi and Hidan stood in Naruto's room as he stood dressed in the gear he wore to the Seireitei, "Alright, are you guys ready to go?" He channeled the Yin chakra to his hand, turning it black and reached inside of Hidan's body, pulling out his Hollow form as his Gigai dropped onto the floor. Both Yoruichi and Hidan nodded, giving him the cue to begin hand-seals, "Then let's do this. Gedou (Outer Path)."

The demonic head rose from the ground with the purple energy barrier at the ground as it used its tongue to pull all three of them inside of its mouth.

XxX

Naruto and Hidan yelled loudly as the Gedou spat them out on the other side, allowing them to fall freely to the ground below, crashing in a heap. Yoruichi landed nearby them on her feet, looking at the disheveled heap that they were tangled in. Naruto stood up first and looked over at Yoruichi, about to ask her how she did that, "Oh, nevermind I already know how you did that. Cats always land on their feet."

Yoruichi gave him a 'v' sign for victory before looking around, "A human, a Hollow, and a Shinigami… one hell of a team to investigate the middle of nowhere." She said as she walked over to one of the trees that Hidan had been talking about, "He's right about these trees though." She said, looking up at very small holes at the top of what would be the canopy, "They're huge, and they're not made of wood, this is some mineral."

Hidan stood up and looked around, "I'm just here for the kick-ass fighting that I'm going to get into. You two can sightsee."

Naruto knocked on one of the trees to find it incredibly solid, "It's like a forest of trees made of rock. Is this really the inside of the Gedou?"

XxX

On a large throne inside of a palace room, Aizen Sousuke sat as a figure walked towards him, "Ah, Harribel. Thank you for coming so quickly." He said pleasantly, "The Numeros have been hearing things about activity in the Forest of Menos. Would you mind heading up a small scouting party to head down there for me? It should be nothing really, there were rumors of a powerful new Hollow that appeared there. Maybe we can recruit this new Hollow."

The woman he was speaking to had the appearance of rather dark skin, green eyes, messy, short blonde hair that she had braided in three locks and had the lower half of her face covered by the elongated collar of her clothing. She wore a black and white boots, a black sash, a white hakama, and a fully zipped up white jacket with the aforementioned elongated collar, however it was cut very short to reveal her entire lower torso and much the lower half of her rather bountiful bosom. At the end of her sleeves she had a pair of black gloves on her hands and on her back was a Zanpakutou, a rather broad and short weapon.

She bowed to Aizen, "I will have my Fraccion head down with me to check the area. If there is anything there we will find it."

Aizen simply smiled his usual confident, calm smile to her in reply, "I know that you will my dear."

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**Chapter complete. I have not much to say other than I hope you enjoyed what you read thus far and drop me a line once you finish reading the chapter. I'm going to go do Spring Break things now, you'll hear from me rather soon. Later.**

**Kenchi out.**


	11. The Sordid Perils of Everyday Existence

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. I'll make Tite Kubo drink bleach until he hands over the rights. I am not above torture, blackmail, and extortion to get the things that I want. He'd better have a badass bodyguard with him that's for damn sure because I'm no lightweight, I don't fight fair in the street, and I maim when I win.

**Chapter 11: The Sordid Perils of Everyday Existence**

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Naruto, Yoruichi, and Hidan walked around the strange forest aimlessly. Hey, it wasn't like they knew where they were so how the hell would they know where they were going? Naruto and Yoruichi were being led around by Hidan, the only one who had been there… however that was a case of the blind leading the blind for the most part.

Hidan walked ahead of the other two, pointing out particular places that he could remember fighting at, "Oh, and over there is where I cut that huge motherfucker's head off. He went down… Down like a paraplegic ragdoll. It was fucking great, you both should have seen it." He pointed to another spot up ahead, "Oh, and that's where-."

Naruto and Yoruichi had tuned him out over an hour ago as they wandered the strange forest, "Seriously… I didn't know the Gedou was this big on the inside. There really needed to be some kind of tablet or scroll to be passed down to people with Rinnegan so they would know this shit. I've been winging it for the last 2000 years. Way to drop the ball original Rikudou Sennin…"

For some reason, the Hollows were giving them a very wide berth. Yoruichi expected them to have been attacked several times already. She thought they would have been assaulted right out of the gate by the dumber Gillian class Menos that she saw when she fell down through the Gedou, "I'm amazed we haven't had to fight yet. But are you sure that the Gedou isn't a portal to somewhere? I mean, you don't know the origin of these techniques you use, you said that yourself, and you said that only you and two other people have ever used them. I'm betting that they didn't exactly share any secrets with you."

"Nope." Naruto said, confirming Yoruichi's theory, "I pretty much had to reverse-engineer everything by myself with some help from a tablet. I'm just lucky that I had 2000 years to do it… and that Shinra Tensei was pretty much instinctual and a great base for learning all of the gravity moves after a while."

Yoruichi looked around thoughtfully, stopping to get a good take of their surroundings. Naruto stopped and looked thoughtfully at Yoruichi's backside, "I can't believe this place though. You can send souls here? The place reeks of the Reiryoku of nothing but Hollows."

"Good scenery though…" Naruto said, looking at Yoruichi's butt and ignoring most of what she said, "Damn good."

"What's so good about it?" Yoruichi said laughingly, "It's nothing but trees made of quartz. It's completely bleak scenery, totally depressing."

Hidan yelled back at them from rather far ahead, "Hey what the fuck are you two doing that far back there? Get your lazy asses in gear and get moving already! I don't have all of eternity you know!"

"Yes you do!" Naruto yelled back, averting his attention from Yoruichi's rear, "I do too! The only person here with any kind of time concerns here is Yoruichi-chan and she doesn't care too much, just wait you impatient idiot!" Naruto found his hand grabbed firmly by Yoruichi and dragged forward roughly, "Damn, grip woman."

Yoruichi shook her head, "Let's go Naruto. You can annoy your pet Hollow later and try to kill each other when we get out of here. Right now I want to know what this place is all about." She kept looking around and seeing the outlines of so many weaker Hollows and even Gillians in the distance, 'So many Hollows… I can't believe that this many exist anywhere outside of Hueco Mundo.' Her eyes then widened as she turned and looked at Naruto whose hand she still had a hold of, 'Did he just-? No… there's no way that it could be that easy for him.' She noticed Naruto's mouth move but didn't really hear what he said, "Huh?"

"I said you've got soft hands Yoruichi-chan." Naruto said off-handedly with a smile on his face as they caught up to Hidan, "Despite the fact that this place might end up being a deathtrap, this is actually kind of nice. You and me bonding like this."

Hidan scoffed as the skull-faced Hollow continued leading them along, "And yeah, because it's not like I'm here or anything, right?"

"I'm pretty much ignoring you until you do something useful in exchange for focusing on Yoruichi-chan." Naruto told his fellow shinobi point-blank, "If it were just you and me we'd be doing some male bonding by way of kicking some hostile Hollow ass, but with the lovely female Shinigami here my plans have changed."

Hidan whined like a child, "Fuck… Well can I go off and look for something cool to do if all you're going to do with the chick is try to get with her out here?" He didn't even wait for an answer, "I don't really give a flying fuck about your answer either way. I came here to kill some monsters and I'm going to kill some monsters, so later." He said before running off elsewhere, prompting the Hollows in the distance to step forward and confront him.

Naruto yelled after his Hollow comrade, "Hey Hidan get back here!" He yelled as he saw Hidan's bladed arm and hand cut through the offending enemy Hollows effortlessly, "Damn it that's the last time I'm bringing you in here for a long time!" Naruto was about to chase after to go get him when he felt Yoruichi keep a firm hold on him to keep him from leaving.

Turning to look at her he saw her shaking her head, "Don't worry about going after him." She said calmly, "He stayed in here on his own for two days last time. This time won't be for nearly as long and it's not like we won't be able to find him later, just follow the sounds of battle." An explosion rang out in the distance where Hidan went off to, "Like that."

Naruto's eye twitched, "He'd better not die… after all the trouble of dragging him out of that cursed spot he was in."

Yoruichi shook her head and motioned for Naruto to follow her, "Come on. I have a hunch about this place that I need to have confirmed or not. And I want to hear the story I've heard you two talking about. The one where you apparently saved the world." She said with a smile, "You big hero."

Naruto smiled wryly and spoke with a tone that for him was rather reserved, "Trust me Yoruichi-chan… I say all of that stuff about a hero's complex but there's a good reason for that. Because when it really mattered and the world needed me I wasn't a hero." He shook his head as his face fell, "My side lost in the end."

Yoruichi blinked as she let go of his hand and he kept walking forward, "But you're still here, and you said-."

"I never lied." He said, stopping in his tracks, "I'm the strongest mortal man period, there's no one left alive from my era, not even any remnants of the shinobi system I grew up with, and why do you think that is? Because we were beaten." He looked around before motioning to her to take a seat on the ground by one of the trees as he made a few Kage Bunshin to watch the surrounding area for them, "I'm going to tell you a story of what happened during the greatest war of my time and how it ended."

Yoruichi moved close to him and sat right beside him against a tree, "A war? You've never told me about this."

"I've never told anyone about it since people stopped talking and forgot about it." Naruto admitted, looking up in the air, "2000 years is a long time to be telling the same old story that history books can't prove or don't even cover. It basically goes like this; a madman wanted control of the world and conspired to capture the nine most powerful creatures in existence, one of which had been contained inside of me. Well, he wound up capturing me because of my own weakness and stupidity and he got them all, and I died."

"You died?" She couldn't believe that he had been killed at some point in time. He was still there wasn't he? His body wasn't a Gigai… did they even have Gigai in the Soul Society 2000 years ago? She felt like a little girl listening to an old man as all she wanted him to do was keep talking, "But how are you here? How did-?"

Naruto held his hand up getting her to stop asking questions that he planned on answering, "Because I got a second chance. Someone didn't take my death lying down and she had the ability to fix it." He frowned deeply thinking about it, "And I don't think I ever fully forgave myself for letting it happen…"

_(Flashback – Over 2000 Years Ago)_

_Inside of a dingy cave, Naruto sat up abruptly with a gasp. The blonde looked around rapidly, 'Where is he? I know he caught me, that wasn't a dream. He was pulling the Kyuubi out of me. I've never felt pain like that in my entire life.' He tried to get up only to find that his lower body wouldn't respond. As he looked down even in the near complete darkness he could see faint signs of color draped across his lap, pink in particular._

_Naruto simply sat there for the longest time, just looking at the weight that had been placed over top of him, not saying or thinking anything. He wasn't that out of it that he couldn't feel a certain presence of familiarity, nor could he ignore the fact that a scent of someone he knew very well was hovering around him, "Sakura-chan?" It wasn't actually a question because he knew she wouldn't respond, and as he heard the echo inside of the cave he wished he hadn't said anything, the reverberation of his voice seemed to be mocking him._

"_Why me?" Naruto asked her non-responsive body as he moved to pick her up off of him and carry her outside, "Why would you do this for me? What about Sasuke? Wasn't that your dream? You were going to get him back and you didn't need me for that. Why did you use that old lady Chiyo's jutsu?" As he reached the light of the outside of the cave his eyes were full of tears as it did happen to be Sakura that had brought him back, and she had a serene smile on her face in death._

_Naruto however, didn't see anything worth smiling about as he looked out over the wasteland that he could oversee from his place. The dead bodies were abundant from both sides. The allied force of shinobi and the White Zetsu Army that had been raised to combat them._

_It was quite evident that the Allied Shinobi Force waged a great battle to keep Uchiha Madara from taking the Kyuubi from him… and it looked like none of them walked away from it, 'Why is it me? Everyone's always…' He looked up and yelled, "It's always me! Why the fuck is it always me? Mom, dad, Sandaime-jiji, Gaara, Asuma-sensei, Ero-sennin, Nagato-nii, Konan, Yamato-taichou, Kirabi-san, hell the entire village at one point, and now Sakura-chan too and everyone else… Why am I always the one that gets to walk away huh? What makes me so goddamn special? Tell me what it is! I want to know why all these people always have to die over me and I can always just keep going! What do you want from me?"_

_His newly resuscitated body gave out and he fell to his knees, cradling Sakura's body against him as the sound of nothing more than him crying out in anguish could be heard for miles and miles on the vacant battlefield._

_If Naruto had noticed at that time, his eyes were no longer blue, but they had taken on a purple ripple pattern... however even if he had known about it he wouldn't have cared less at that moment in time._

(End Flashback)

As he stopped talking, Yoruichi found that she couldn't look away from Naruto's face as his eyes seemed to ice over while he told her of his past, "So… that was how it ended? That was the end of your era?"

Naruto nodded, "Madara's army could just keep rebuilding itself because they were basically grown humans, spawned by the cells of one of the strongest men that had ever lived. He marched all over the continent and took control in two years. There was no such thing as a hidden village anymore. If you didn't work for Madara you didn't work for anyone… because you were already dead. All the while he was working to fuse the nine beasts of power into one being that put them all to shame, and eventually he found out how to do it."

"And then what?" Yoruichi asked him, not getting a response, which confused her. He told her everything else so freely and he was just going to stop when his story was getting good? Let it be known that the thing about Yoruichi was that she had a few traits to go along with her occasional cat-like appearance. Curiosity was one of those traits, "You're just going to stop there? I'd really like to know."

Naruto pulled up the shirt under his sage coat and revealed his torso which showed his wickedly elaborate seal that housed the creature he had told Yamamoto about at the captain's meeting, "Two years later I decided to give it one more try. I was going to win or die trying, but at least I could say I made an attempt. I had two years of training to learn what I needed to use the powers granted to me by the Rinnegan, and I had my own small little force. I was a summoner of toads, and for me and the future of this world they all came to buy me time." He then shook his head, "But I lost again…"

_(Flashback – Two Years After the Fall of the Allied Shinobi Force)_

'_I was a failure after all…' Naruto thought to himself as he lay motionless on the floor, a bloody mess, 'I'm no hero, I'm no great ninja, and I'm sure no child of prophecy…' _

_Naruto had infiltrated the grounds that Madara had prepared for the resurrection of the Juubi while the small force he had managed to pull together to assist him kept the White Zetsu Army busy elsewhere. He made it all the way to the man himself when right before he could attack him he found himself in combat with Uchiha Sasuke, who saw Naruto as the last remnant of the village and system that took his entire family away._

_Naruto fought well, but the two combined Uchiha with their powerful Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan were simply too much for him to take, even with his Rinnegan, as they had more time to work with their power and fought together against him. In a scene reminiscent of his youth, Sasuke shoved a Chidori right through Naruto's chest and left him for dead._

'_Everyone believed in me… they told me I could do it. I made them all believe that I could fix everything. I let them all down.' The pain of his wounds didn't matter to him, he didn't care about living or dying here. He simply had to prove the people that had believed in him and sacrificed their lives for him to have the opportunity to end it all right, he was the one that could stop it all._

_Meanwhile, not too far away, Madara had activated the humanoid-looking statue that held all of the nine demons taken from around the ninja world by way of using Sasuke as his medium to synchronize with the statue, "That's it Sasuke. Just a few more moments and the entire world will know of the extent of your hatred." The body of the younger Uchiha began to glow as chakra of all colors began emerging from the statue and engulfing his body, "Yes Sasuke, you will live on as the Juubi! Although, unfortunately for you, that will have to be an existence that you carry out inside of me!"_

_Naruto had made it to his feet in time to begin to see this take place, 'No… this can't be over.' He started limping over towards Madara and Sasuke who slowly began to become overwhelmed by the chakra that was beginning to form in the shape of the Juubi, 'It's not over until my heart stops!'_

"_Uzumaki Naruto." Madara said calmly, "You just don't know how to die do you? I've killed you twice already and you just won't stay down. Maybe you're the real immortal out of all of us?" He said sardonically to the gravely injured blonde, "Well you can bear witness as I become greater than the Rikudou Sennin! I will bring peace to this world, because now it's mine!"_

"_You're no Rikudou Sennin!" Naruto roared at him, "Nothing here belongs to you! Not the eyes you stole for your Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan, not Sasuke's body or will, not Nagato's Rinnegan, not the nine Bijuu that you stole, not even the statue that you keep them in! Nothing here is yours! You're not God! You're just a lunatic!" Naruto's Rinnegan was out as tears poured down his eyes, "How can someone like you take all of this power? You don't know anything about pain, you've never felt sorrow over anything you've lost! And you don't know anything about sacrifice, so how could you become any kind of Jinchuuriki! All you have is hatred!"_

"_And hatred is strong enough to have the world!" Madara said as the Juubi form began bubbling and trying to form corporeal mass, "The world can be controlled by hatred, it can bring peace!"_

_Naruto grit his teeth, "You never understood a thing… and if your clan felt this way I can understand why the original Rikudou Sennin never passed anything down to your founder. But that's okay, because I won't quit! Even if it takes me the end of time I'll do my best, one day I'll try to ensure that everyone in the world understands each other! I'll bring peace myself!" Naruto began making hand-seals, "__Fuuinjutsu: Genryuu Kyuu Fuujin (Sealing Technique: Illusionary Dragon Nine Consuming Seals)__!"_

_Madara began cackling wildly, "I've already used that jutsu you fool! How do you think all of this is already happening? The Juubi is mine!" His laughing stopped abruptly when all of the power of the Jyuubi passed through his body and on back to Naruto. He made himself intangible, but as the seconds dragged on and turned into minutes he shouted at Naruto in terror, "What happened? What did you do Uzumaki? What the hell did you do to my plan?"_

_Naruto's body glowed bright yellow as it appeared flames were flickering off of him, "What do you think I've been doing for two years Madara-teme? I've been working as hard as I could to learn everything I could about the Rikudou Sennin and then I found something in Konoha's ruins, more specifically Naka Shrine."_

_Madara knew of the shrine of course from his time in Konoha. Those with Sharingan could decipher some of what a large tablet full of writing held, those with Mangekyou Sharingan could read much more. A large bulk of his knowledge for his plan came from that tablet._

"_The Rinnegan let me read the entire thing!" Naruto shouted in a pained manner as he could feel his body nearly ripping apart from the power flowing into him, "Only those with a true Rinnegan can truly use the __Gedou Mazou (Demonic Statue of the Outer Path)__! Anything a pretender like you can do is overridden by a true sage, a true sage with Rinnegan!"_

_Madara had never figured how Naruto had obtained his Rinnegan that he used during their battle and he never cared since it still didn't lead to Naruto defeating him, "How did you-?"_

_Naruto cut him off and answered him, "Because of Itachi, and because of Nagato-nii… and because you fucked up and let me see what the world could really be if you were in control! I won't let everyone feel that kind of pain the way everyone you manipulated and killed did! I'm the new Rikudou Sennin you son of a bitch, and I'm the only one who can do it so just die!"_

_Madara had the ability to avoid damage and become intangible, but that only lasted for 5 minutes at a time. Naruto had been pulling in the power of the Juubi for that entire length of time and his intangibility had run out. There were still days of this that needed to happen before it was complete, and anyone in the vicinity was simply out of luck, as Madara figured out when his body began to turn to ash, "No! You damned brat, how could you win? I'm immortal! I had every advantage, I had everything planned out! All of these years! This world is mine! How could have kept disrupting my plans, even from the day of your birth!"_

_Naruto only had one thing to say before his enemy's body turned to ash completely and drifted away, "I'm unpredictable." With Madara's body gone, Naruto could now focus on the mind-splitting pain that came with him sealing the strongest creature in the world inside of his body. Anything within a 10 kilometer radius of the site was eradicated by the outpouring of power. Naruto screamed for the next three days until the Juubi was fully within his body and the conflict had truly come to a close._

(End Flashback)

"Wow…" Yoruichi said, looking at Naruto in a new light. He really was the man that saved the world if all of this was true, and he had yet to lie to her about anything to date, "But wait. What happened to that Sasuke guy?"

Naruto looked at Yoruichi and sighed, "Sasuke _became_ the Juubi. Madara used his body as a medium to station the power of the monster. And now Sasuke is the monster, and he's inside of me… and I have to say, it really, really sucks."

Yoruichi moved closer to get a good look at his seal as she poked his torso, "Why?"

"Because he's still alive, he's just sleeping most of the time, but he wakes up every one thousand years." Naruto glowered at the seal on his belly, "And he really doesn't like the fact that he's trapped inside of me. Every time he wakes up, I have to fight him or else he'll break out and the Juubi will be free again. I've done it twice, and I only won off of sheer dumb luck and tactics. I have a thousand years to get a new plan ready each time. I can't overpower the Juubi flat-out."

"And if you ever wound up losing?" Yoruichi wondered. The way he spoke of the creature she could assure herself that whatever would happen wouldn't be for the better.

"The world is over. You Shinigami would have to find a way to intervene somehow. The Juubi would run rampant and you can't kill it, it's not a living creature with a soul, it's chakra, it's energy that has taken a physical form." Naruto said, forming a Rasengan in his hand as a form of demonstration, "No one on the planet would be able to stop it or capture it. Until I master my yin chakra there isn't anything I can do." He then stood up, "But there are more problems than just that, and I just beat him not too long ago. I have another 1000 years to work with here. I'll deal with this Aizen guy first." He reached down and offered Yoruichi a hand to help her off of the ground.

The dark-skinned Shinigami smiled and accepted his help, "How did the Shinigami not try to step in and assist you back then? This seems like a major deal, something that the Soul Society couldn't ignore." She said thoughtfully before thinking about the time-frame, "But then 2000 years ago is when the academy for Shinigami was formed. Around that time the Gotei 13 were probably in complete disarray, setting things up for it, and with the influx of souls from the war you spoke up the forces were probably overwhelmed with the amount of death. Hollows probably ran rampant at that time too." She sighed at not being able to offer any input about the era in the Soul Society to him, "I don't know. It was _way_ before my time anyway."

Naruto dusted his pants and the back of his sage coat off, "Yeah well, it's my problem. I've been dealing with it for as long as I can remember and I'll keep dealing with it. I'm the one who survived and it's my responsibility. Don't worry about it Yoruichi-chan."

"I won't. Not as long as you're the one holding it back." She said confidently before giving him a rather long kiss. After a moment as she drew away from his slowly a pair of blue eyes looked at her in confusion, prompting her to answer his unasked question with her next comment, "Thank you for telling me that story. I'm not going to sit here and imagine something like that happening to everyone I knew."

Naruto rubbed the back of his head sheepishly, "Ah it's okay. Telling the story every now and then… It kind of helps me keep them alive, inside, you know? I don't want to forget about them. They all made me who I am." He looked around the odd forest, "Should we be looking for Hidan right now?"

Shaking her head, Yoruichi continued walking and exploring the forest, "Nah, if I'm right about this place then he's probably having the time of his life in here."

XxX

(With Hidan)

"I'm having the best time _ever_!" Hidan shouted as he cut his way through another trio of lowly Hollows that tried to attack him, "It's like these dumb fucks don't get the point yet, the only chance they have is to run away from me!" He turned around to see a group of Hollows doing just that, "Now these are the smart one! Too fucking bad for you though suckers! Cero (Hollow Flash)!" Hidan opened his mouth and fired off a red blast of energy that hit the weak Hollows in the distance and eradicated them.

As the remains of the Hollows vanished from his sight, Hidan sighed deeply in relief of sorts, "Ah I love the sounds of slaughter in the morning." His skull-like visage blinked as he scratched his silver hair, "Is it even morning? Bah, I don't care, I love the sounds of slaughter _anytime_!" He said before cackling to himself, "Come on, who's next! Anyone? Uzumaki-brat and the sexy lady with him aren't coming back anytime soon, I've got all the time in the world to keep ripping you fools apart!"

"What is a Vasto Lorde doing down here?"

Hidan whipped his head around as his eyes shone in glee. A trio of generic Adjuchas-class Hollows that were larger than him stood in front of him flanked by a dozen Gillian-class Menos, "Killing the whole fucking lot of you. What does it look like I'm doing?" Hidan said without much fear.

One of the Hollows, probably the leader of the lot of them, stepped forward, "A Vasto Lorde shouldn't be down in the Forest of Menos, someone like you should be above the surface with the other powerful Hollows… and why aren't you an Arrancar like all of the other most powerful Hollows up above in Hueco Mundo?"

Hidan sighed, why did his prey always have to try and prolong their lives by telling him things that _might_ have been useful, but at the moment he couldn't have cared any less about, "Look… I don't give damn about where I am, and I don't have a fucking clue about what Hueco Mundo is. All I know is that I see idiots that need to be slaughtered."

"Don't be foolish." Another of the Adjuchas said to Hidan, "There's no reason for you to want to kill us, you're stronger than us. We would never want to attack someone like you-." He was cut off when in the blink of an eye Hidan cut his head in half, immediately killing the Hollow.

Hidan licked the blood from the blades on the back of his wrist and grinned in an evil fashion. He started walking towards the group of Hollows that started stepping back away from him, "I don't care whether you want to fight me or not. Do you really think that the prey has a choice of when the predator chooses to come after them? No, of course not! Prey doesn't get to choose when they have fight for their lives! All you can do is be ready! Those that are, you will live, those of you that aren't, you'll simply die just like everyone else! Weak fools like you don't get to fucking tell me you're not going to fight, because I don't need any of you to fight, I just need you to die!"

The left blade extending from Hidan's fist penetrated the chest of a second Adjuchas as he used his scythe-bladed right arm to cleave his head off, "Uzumaki-brat said I can't kill humans otherwise he would stop me himself and I know that he could, but for the rest of you I wasn't given any kind of instruction. Now let me savor your suffering and despair!" He said as he attacked the mass of Gillian in the background.

XxX

Not too far away a trio of women looked over Hidan's systematic decimation of the Hollows unfortunate enough to come near him.

One of the women watched Hidan's attack, shaking her head at his barbaric combat style, "Look at that lunatic." She had two different colored eyes; one blue while the other was amber with a red outline. She had black jaw-length hair and a strange narrow white piece atop her head with a horn in the middle. She wore a white hakama, a white jacket with shoulder-length sleeves and a v-neck, as well as white gloves on her hands. She had thick cuffs around her wrists and at the end of her jacket sleeves, "If we go down there right now he'll probably try to kill us too."

"You're not scared are you Apacci?" One of the other two women said laughingly. She was dark-skinned and had long, thick, wavy brown hair and green eyes. On the top of her head sat a three-sectioned crown and around her neck was a thick necklace. She wore a white skirt and white corset top that showed a Hollow hole above her navel and had white bands around her wrists and biceps, "You afraid that guy'll tear you apart if you go down there?"

"Like hell I am!" The first woman, identified as Apacci snapped at her comrade, "This guy can't beat us like this. We're Arrancar, he's still just a normal Hollow, you know we can beat him Mila Rose."

The third woman had lavender eyes, long olive-green hair, and three pink dots below her right eye. She wore a single white dress that was very long and had sleeves that went well past her arms and in her hair seemed to be a three-piece hair-clip, "The way you two argue it makes you seem like you _both of you_ are afraid of him." She said, "It makes you both seem very weak. It is understandable though, his Reiatsu is very high."

"Shut up Sung-Sun!" Both of the other girls yelled at her as Apacci tried to verbally lay into her, "If you're so much better than us I want to see you go down there! Can't you feel that? He's a Vasto Lorde like Harribel-sama was before she became an Arrancar."

Sung-Sun moved her sleeved arm in front of her mouth as she laughed at Apacci, "And that sounds like a wonderful idea." She said sarcastically, "Because fighting a Vasto Lorde anytime for any reason is a great idea. I think I'll stay up here thank you very much."

"That sounds like a good idea." A masculine voice said from behind her, causing her to turn and jump away, prepared to fight alongside her allies. Hidan stood with his arms crossed as he looked at them amusedly, "So you've all got a little bite to you, and you're all better to look at than the Hollows I've been taking out thus far. I like that." Hidan's body was covered in the blood of Hollows he had killed thus far.

Apacchi pointed at him, "How did you even find us?"

"I fucking know when people are watching me." Hidan said sardonically, "It's not like I'm unfamiliar with people trying to kill me. It's just that I have to start paying attention now because it can actually happen. Now then-." He brandished his scythe-like blades on the side of his right wrist, "-Who's first, or are we supposed to do this all at once?"

"Wait." Sung-Sun said, preventing Hidan from immediately attacking them, "Do you want to be stronger?"

"Nope." Hidan said dismissively, "I don't really care. As long as I can kill, and Uzumaki has made sure that I can, I'm okay. Jashin-sama will be pleased… Speaking of which…" He was about to lunge to attack again when Mila Rose spoke distastefully.

"Jashin-sama? Ugh…" She said, as if she had something disgusting in her mouth, "You call him that? I swear, that arrogant jerk has enough names already The 'God-King of Hueco Mundo'."

That stopped Hidan in his tracks, "Wait, are you seriously telling me that you all know of Jashin-sama?"

"Baraggan is his actual name." Sung-Sun said as she started thinking rapidly, 'He seems hesitant to kill us now that he knows we are aware of Baraggan. Maybe if we work this right we can get Aizen-sama a new ally. This is why we came down here anyway, to find the Hollow that the Numeros had heard rumors on.' She took a chance and moved towards Hidan, "If you would like, we could introduce you to him possibly, and someone else that would like to meet you."

Hidan looked at Sung-Sun and the two other women, 'Uzumaki doesn't need me. He can always pull me back out of here whenever he needs me like he did the last time. Who knows how long he plans on staying here anyway.' Hidan smirked at the three women, "Lead the way. And tell me about this place while you're at it, and more about Hollows, I'm… rather new at all of this."

XxX

(With Naruto and Yoruichi)

"Odama Rasengan (Great Ball Spiraling Sphere)!" A Gillian's mask shattered as the massive Hollow fell to the ground dead. Naruto and a clone darted between two trees on their way back down to the ground next to Yoruichi, "I thought there would be more of these guys in here. I guess Hidan's attracting them all to him." He said as the clone dispelled.

"You keep such a useful psychopath with you." Yoruichi said to the blonde who was shaking out the arm he used to smash the Gillian's mask with the Odama Rasengan, "I think I actually do know where we are. Are you aware of the layout of the planes?" Naruto shook his head, "The human world and the Soul Society are separated, separated by Hueco Mundo, although only Hollows can really access or leave this dimension… until you of course."

Naruto looked over at her in surprise, "So you're saying that this is the place you told me the Aizen guy went to?" A smirk couldn't help but reach his face as he started laughing, "I think I've seen all I need to. From here I can start exploring the place and coming up with ways to get the drop on him. If all he has are those three guys he left the Seireitei with I can organize a strike pretty quickly once this gets to Yamamoto-jiji. I don't have my team yet."

Yoruichi shook her head, "I know what he'll do, and a full strike won't be it. Hueco Mundo is where all Hollows live, that's very dangerous for a full strike here and now. Just Aizen, Ichimaru, and Tousen wouldn't be enough for any kind of plan that they have."

"Speaking of dangerous…" Naruto said to himself and Yoruichi before he shut his eyes and pointed in a certain direction, "You can come out now. I can sense you there, you're too strong to just hide from me." A low booming noise preceded a person appearing fifty feet away from Naruto and his beautiful Shinigami partner, "*sigh* I swear to Kami, it's like my eternal curse or something… not that I'm complaining." He said once he got a good look at the person that stood before them.

A blonde woman with dark skin, but with a lighter tone than Yoruichi, that had most of her face covered up by her outfit that didn't leave much else to Naruto's imagination stood in front of them, "You can sense my Reiatsu, and yours is quite impressive as well. Both of you, even though the female is better than you at hiding her own. I had to trail you all the way here."

Yoruichi crossed her arms over her chest as she looked at the strange woman who seemed to be radiating power, power that seemed to be that of a Hollow, "Who are you and what are you? Nothing we've come across so far has been passive towards us and I'm not expecting you to be either."

"It's okay Yoruichi-chan." Naruto said, putting a hand on one of her arms, "I can't feel any ill intent from her, at least at the moment." He then focused on the new arrival, "I am Uzumaki Naruto. I don't think you've been looking for me just to observe us."

"I am Tia Harribel." The mysterious woman said, "And I actually have been looking for you just to observe you. My mission was to come here and find the cause of the trouble in the Forest of Menos from a few days ago… I believe that the new Vasto Lorde myself and my associates found not too long ago killing hoards of Hollows was the source, but then I felt you." She began to walk forward and came to a stop when Naruto deposited a kunai into his hand from the sleeve of his sage coat and Yoruichi fell into a ready stance, "I am not here to fight you."

Naruto put his kunai up and Yoruichi got out of her stance as she began to scrutinize her words, "Your mission? And who sent you on this mission of yours?"

"Aizen-sama." Harribel said plainly as there was no need to hide it, "And to answer your earlier question I am an Arrancar; a Hollow that has removed their mask to obtain powers reminiscent of you Shinigami."

Naruto looked at her, tilting his head as if it would give him a better perspective, "I… didn't know Hollows got this good looking. It's like I learn something new everyday."

Yoruichi rolled her eyes and felt like smacking Naruto one for being stupid, "Would you stop ogling the agent of Aizen please? This is serious."

"Why?" Naruto asked, still getting his eye-full of Harribel, "She doesn't want to fight, I don't want to fight. Fighting right now wouldn't do anything for anyone, and since we're not fighting I can admire this thing of beauty. Unless you're jealous…" He finished with a grin to Yoruichi.

"As if." Yoruichi replied rather heatedly, bumping Naruto with her hip, "You wouldn't even know what to do with all of this." She ignored Naruto's double-take at her to keep speaking to Harribel, "So you've found us. What do you plan to do now?"

Harribel's impassive eyes panned between Yoruichi and Naruto, "Nothing. As long as you don't do anything foolish like attack me I won't do anything. I wasn't ordered to fight. Although I would appreciate it if Uzumaki stopped staring at me."

"Hold on." Naruto said, keeping up his gawking for a few seconds longer before averting his eyes back up to Harribel's obscured face, "Okay, I'm good now." He then became extremely businesslike, "Now what are we going to do? I don't want to fight, but you work for Aizen, I can't just let you go. I can't let him tear apart entire dimensions so he can become some twisted version of a god, so if you're important to whatever he's planning..."

Harribel shook her head, "I do not wish to fight you either, but you're clearly opposing Aizen-sama, and you." She said, looking at Yoruichi, "I know you Shihouin Yoruichi. My power has been gifted to me by Aizen-sama, he gave me the strength to protect those close to me through sacrifice. I won't allow you to harm them or Aizen-sama's plans."

Naruto walked forward, "I don't care about hurting you unless you attack innocents and then it's my problem, I don't care if you're a Hollow or an Arrancar or whatever, and I don't care if you _work_ for Aizen. I'm going to stop him. And if I were you I'd take a look at what's going on around you. Where did you learn about 'sacrifice' from?"

Harribel grabbed a hold of the sword she had on her person and looked as if she were ready to fight, "Aizen-sama. Why does it matter to you?"

"Because having someone _explain_ sacrifice is not the best way to learn about it dear, trust me." Naruto said as he continued to walk ever closer not minding that Harribel had a hold of her sword, "You don't get it until someone actually sacrifices something for you or you sacrifice something for someone else. And I'm pretty sure Aizen told you that so you would sacrifice yourself for him in the future." He was then forced to jump back to avoid a slash that was directed at him.

Harribel had her Zanpakutou out after her attempt to suddenly cut Naruto down and had her eyes narrowed at him. Her weapon was not particularly long, however it was rather wide and was hollow in the middle almost like a hacksaw, "If that is what it comes to… then I'll do what I must."

Yoruichi stared at Harribel after her attack attempt on Naruto, 'Could she be? Is she under Kyouka Suigetsu's hypnosis as well? She has to be to some extent. Someone this strong accepting sacrificing her own life for someone so easily…'

"Do you even know what you're willing to sacrifice yourself for?" Naruto asked incredulously, "You have a choice, and choosing to sacrifice yourself for Aizen's goals doesn't seem smart. He's using you. You're expendable to him." She slashed at him again, but this time he drew his kunai from his sleeve and blocked her attack.

"And what would you know about sacrifice?" Harribel asked him before he threw her back and began to laugh. As she saw him retract his kunai into his sleeve, "What's so funny?"

"What you just said!" Naruto choked out through his laughter. He carried on for a few more seconds before calming down, "The first bulk of my life was nothing but sacrifice. People sacrificing themselves for me, my own safety and wishes sacrificed for others and for the future… and even now. Do you think I want to be here? No, I don't, not really. But I'm here anyway to keep Aizen from destroying the balance of the world. Don't tell me I don't know of sacrifice, I could tell you at least a hundred stories." He said locking eyes with Harribel, momentarily triggering his Rinnegan before his normal eye color came back and the two stared each other down.

Yoruichi looked away from the tense conversation that the two were having and alerted Naruto to something, "Naruto, Hidan's Reiatsu is getting weaker. Either he's in trouble or he's getting too far away."

Naruto broke off his optical duel with Harribel and growled, "Damn it, let's go find him before he gets too far. I don't want to have to look all over some hostile plane of existence for him." He turned back to Harribel and pointed at her, "I want you to at least think about what I've said. If you really want to know what that word of yours means and entails I'd be glad to tell you anytime, I'm not that hard to find."

"The next time we meet Uzumaki Naruto…" Harribel said, putting her sword up, "Chances are, we will be enemies in earnest. There won't be any time to talk."

Naruto scoffed and began walking away with Yoruichi, "Okay, lead the way Yoruichi-chan. I can only really sense Reiryoku and stuff in general, I can't pinpoint it like you and other Shinigami can yet, at least not outside of Sage Mode."

Yoruichi began leading the path that she could feel Hidan in, "Are you sure it's okay to just leave her like that? She's among the enemy."

Naruto shook his head to dispute Yoruichi's remark, "She's being used. And I fight on my own terms, not just because it seems like the right thing to do at the moment. If she attacked us or something then I would have fought, she didn't so I didn't. Aizen is my real issue, anyone that gets in the way I just need to get them out of the way."

XxX

Hidan looked around to where the three women had led him, "So this is Hueco Mundo?" He said to himself. Apparently the forest they had been in the entire time was underground. Above ground, the landscape was an endless white desert with countless dunes and no life whatsoever in sight, 'Man if it weren't for all of the other Hollows to kill I'd rather stick around in the human world if I had the choice.'

"Yes. Sung-Sun said to him as she, Apacci, and Mila Rose led him along, "You would make a very powerful Arrancar. On par perhaps with Harribel-sama."

"I agree." The women all stopped as a lone figure walked across the sands in front of them, "I see you've found the cause of the stir in the Forest of Menos, a powerful Vasto Lorde." As he got into sight the figure wore a long white open jacket and all white clothing underneath.

"Aizen-sama." The three women all bowed to him as he drew closer to them all, stopping in front of Hidan. Mila Rose spoke up at this time, "Yes, this is Hidan. He wants to meet Barragan."

Aizen had an unreadable smile on his face as he appraised the new Hollow, "For such a Hollow to appear out of nowhere like this and exude such power. I'm making all kinds of finds these days. And you would like to meet one of my strongest underlings."

'Aizen Sousuke.' Hidan thought to himself as he felt the urge to stab the man right through the chest, 'It would be so easy. Uzumaki-brat's job would be over and all I would have to do would be just a little move of my arm.'

"You relish in battle and find nothing better than the throws of combat." Aizen said, pinpointing Hidan's character to a tee, "You've taken countless lives even as a human and now as a Hollow you see no reason to stop. You have no abject morals and no qualms of taking the life of anyone you want. Come with me, and you can engage in battle to your heart's content."

Hidan at first didn't say anything. Eventually he merely smirked, "My heart's content huh?" He began cackling wildly, "I can already do that! I'm here in Hueco Mundo, a land with no rules, no regulations, nothing to penalize me for what I do! This. Is. My land! I don't need to work for you, I can already do anything I want! What could you offer me? What could you possibly offer me? Power? I don't want it! I can get my own power!"

As Hidan continued to rant he could feel Hidan's power increase, and he could also feel an influx coming from somewhere else, somewhere rather close to him, 'The Hougyoku… Is it responding to his will? Does he really feel this strongly about this? The Hougyoku is giving him power!'

Hidan kept speaking and talking down Aizen's offer, "And what will you do if I don't take your 'offer'? Will you kill me? I would love to see you try! Even if you behead me I would keep going without a body and bite your throat out! You can't threaten me, impress any kind of will over me, nothing! Death is not the worst fate possible! I _am_ death!" He then reached to his face and grabbed his mask, "Oh, and girls… thanks for the tip." With that, he ripped the skull mask off of his face with one fluid motion and the others could only watch as Hidan's body began to transform.

Aizen and Harribel's Fraccion were now in full retreat as Hidan's manic shrieking laughter rang out from where his transformation took place. Aizen could only clutch the orb he had in his grasp, 'Was his will actually strong enough to overshadow my own? Who was that?' He hadn't even gotten the opportunity to reveal his Shikai to the Hollow before he ripped his mask off, 'That has to be one of the most insane beings I have ever come across. The next time I come into contact with him I must have him join me or destroy him.'

XxX

Naruto and Yoruichi eventually trailed the path of Hidan's Reiatsu out through the exit that led them above ground, but with a deep change to his power they didn't have time to observe the landscape. Not too long later they found Hidan standing in a massive pit of sand that had been scorched black by his power, "Um, Hidan are you alright?"

Hidan's appearance was fully human once more (and once more he was completely unclothed). Around his neck was an amulet in the symbol of Jashin that seemed to be comprised of bone, his Hollow hole was still in the place of his heart, and in both of his hands were a pair a of weapons. In his right hand he held a strange cylindrical instrument and in his left hand he held a large red scythe with three blades on it that was attached to his arm by a black coil that snaked around the limb and held the weapon by the bottom.

Hidan looked up from his hole in the ground at Naruto and Yoruichi and started laughing lowly, "Yeah Uzumaki-brat, never better." He said as he started climbing out of the hole, "Do you have any gear on you or are you all just going to be graced with my fucking full glory for the time being?"

Naruto rolled his eyes and pulled a scroll from his pocket, unsealing some clothes for Hidan that he threw at the man, "I've seen your junk two times more than I ever needed to… get dressed."

Hidan put the clothes on and smirked at what Naruto threw him, "Aw, I'm feeling nostalgic again. You kept this stuff?" Hidan was given a set of black pants, black sandals, and a black cloak with red clouds on it.

"It's a reminder…" Naruto said lowly, "You're an Arrancar now. How?"

Hidan chuckled as he finished putting on his clothing, "I met that Aizen guy. He tried to turn me into one of his punk-ass drones like those three bitches that bowed to him when he showed up. But I verbally bitch-slapped that motherfucker and ripped my mask off like those other ones told me I had to so I could do this just to prove a point... it hurt like hell."

A chuckle came from Yoruichi, "I think that today was a major win for the most part. We know you can get to Hueco Mundo now, and Hidan's an Arrancar. If Aizen has the one that we met on his side, and Hidan said that he had three more we need to be prepared for an army of sorts."

Hidan licked his lips in anticipation, "I get an entire world full of foolish Hollows to tear apart whenever I want, _and_ I get to fight an army later? Okay, I know I picked the right side this time. And I didn't need them, I doubt they knew Jashin-sama anyway… just trying to sucker me in. As if my god would allow someone like that Aizen pussy to tell him what to do."

"I tell you what to do." Naruto said, grinning at him with Yoruichi at his side.

"No you don't." Hidan said defensively, "When you tell me what to do they're usually things that I wouldn't hate doing. Everything you've told me to do since the day you busted me out has been fun as hell. Besides… you have like two dozen different ways to trap me again if you have to. I can't mess with you too much right now… you're stronger than Leader-sama was back in the day."

"We've got what we need for now out of this trip." Yoruichi said with a look of satisfaction on her face, "Let's go home. You can make plans as to what to do later, and share this with Yamamoto, but I'm telling you I already know what he's going to do."

Naruto nodded and began making hand-seals when Hidan stopped him, "Check out what those bitches that told me about Hollows and this place told me I could do." Hidan's hand reached out and seemingly grabbed the fabric of the dimension before pulling and ripping it apart, slowly creating an opening, "It's called a Garganta."

"Sweet!" Naruto said gleefully, "Now I'm not the designated ride when it's time to come back here!" He said as he jumped inside.

Hidan rubbed his hands together and cackled, "And I don't need to ask Uzumaki-brat for permission to come back here anymore!" He then also jumped through.

Yoruichi shook her head at the antics of the two men that had left, "I can't believe that those two are over 2000 years old…" She then followed them through as the Garganta closed on itself.

XxX

Harribel walked at her own reserved pace back towards a massive white fortress in the distance. She felt Hidan's massive release of Reiatsu but didn't bother to go see what had transpired, all it would have done was force her into a meaningless fight with the barbaric Hollow. A mistake had possibly been made, but it wouldn't matter much in the end.

But what did Uzumaki Naruto mean by Aizen's meaning of sacrifice? She wasn't under strict orders yet. She could probably venture to the human world and question him on what exactly he meant by his words, all of them. He wasn't a Shinigami and he didn't seem outwardly hostile even though he knew what she was and who she worked for.

'Uzumaki Naruto you are a strange being.' She thought to herself as she continued to walk along in the desert alone, 'Those strange eyes of yours… the odd way you carry yourself despite the obvious power you have… however your ambition isn't as great as Aizen-sama's. But you believe that you can stop him. There has to be something more to you.'

* * *

**Chapter done. It is two a.m. Eastern Standard Time. But I'm here for all of you! I have plans of greatness for this story in the later chapters so don't sleep on my yarn-weaving acumen. The useless thoughts that fill my head sometimes manifest in the form of story ideas and they take on lives of their own, hopefully you will all come to acknowledge this very soon**

**Anyway, hope it was an enjoyable read for you all and I'll catch you around next time. Thank you for your patronage… as if… you people aren't paying me for this.**

**Kenchi out.**

**P.S.: It feels so good getting checks in the mail! 350 large for your boy! And I didn't obtain it through illicit means either… as far as you all know. That's not the point though. No more Top Ramen three square meals a day for me! I can afford the good stuff now. Yep… I can now afford cold cuts and bread! Living large! And hell, I might even get some mustard too, what'cha know about that?**


	12. The Gentle Art of Making Enemies

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. As evidence of the fact that I absolutely will not tolerate any of you smartasses pointing this fact out, I have broken three of the five fingers on my right hand (the index, middle, and ring fingers) because someone commented on my lack of ownership of some of my favorite manga series… and Kenchi618 had to reach back and slap a ho. Don't make the same mistake. Next time I will use my good, left hand, and you don't want that…

I keep my pimp hand strong.

Enjoy the chapter.

**Chapter 12: The Gentle Art of Making Enemies**

* * *

(With Naruto and Yoruichi – Arctic Circle)

Once again, roughly a week and a half after their excursion to Hueco Mundo, Naruto dragged Yoruichi away from Karakura Town for company as he traversed the globe for his own personal reasons that he wasn't very forthcoming with, and the cat-like female was of course as curious as ever as to where Naruto was taking her so she didn't argue too much. So far they had gotten on two planes, had flown out of Tokyo, had completely left Japan altogether, had wound up in Canada of all places, and had gotten all geared up.

Geared up for what you ask? Well from the northernmost point of Saskatchewan they headed into the Northwest Territories and then further north into Nunavut by the Arctic Circle. Luckily for them it was still summer, but it was still cold as hell seeing as how the season was about to turn.

Once again, Yoruichi had to wonder how much money Naruto actually had, because he seemingly doled out the cash for their little spur of the moment trip like it was nothing, as if he were merely paying for bus fare to head downtown. He even handed her a passport like he had handed her a permission slip for a school field trip.

"Naruto…" Yoruichi managed to growl out. She was really getting tired of following her fearless leader. Despite her having almost infinitesimally more knowledge than him about the Soul Society he had an almost inexhaustible amount of knowledge about every single nook and cranny of the globe in the world of the living that was worth talking about, "I've been very patient. I've followed you all the way out here without asking you too much, but now you have me out here in the middle of nowhere on an outlying island, so far away from any town that we haven't even seen a human being in several hours, and since when can you speak that language you were speaking?"

"Inuktitut." Naruto supplied helpfully, looking at his lovely female companion with a smile. They were both wearing white parkas and white boots, Yoruichi had her hood pulled up, Naruto didn't think he needed it so he didn't have it on. They had been walking for hours, with the only sound other than the two trying to talk to one another being the sound of snow and ice crunching under their boots, "I learned to speak the languages of the places where I was hiding stuff Yoruichi-chan. It would really suck to overhear someone talking about finding one of my hideaways and not know what they were saying. Not that anyone could even find one of my places. Only a ninja could, and there aren't any of them like me these days."

"Why didn't we take Hidan?" Yoruichi asked him, wrinkling her nose as powdered snow flurries flew into her face with the blowing of the wind.

"Because he would be so bored he wouldn't know what to do with himself and he would just ditch us to go straight to Hueco Mundo once he realized we wouldn't be fighting." Naruto answered, casually as he continued to lead her along, "Besides, someone needed to keep watch over the base, and Urahara was going to install one of those kickass training fields in the basement… he just had one request before he got to work on it."

XxX

(Karakura Town – Urahara Shop)

Hidan had come over to Urahara's shop to help him out due to them being comrades for whatever Naruto's little squad were meant to be used for, also because of the promises by the man that he would be fed very well, and he was sick of eating nothing but ramen (Naruto had been the one to go grocery shopping and fill the cabinets and refrigerator) while he waited for Naruto and Yoruichi to come back.

In his human Gigai, Hidan sat in the middle of a binding array with a bored look on his face. Tessai had a fully focused look on his face as if he were preparing to hold Hidan back from breaking away or attacking. The silver-haired former ninja gave him a deadpan look, "You know Muscles, if I wanted to fucking kill you I would have just done it by now. I'm not going to do anything to you or the bucket-hat guy. Uzumaki would bind me back to some kind of holy land for all eternity again if I did."

"Sorry Hidan-san." Tessai said, actually apologetic to the Hollow in human form, "This is a precaution. Urahara-san requires you to be in your Arrancar form so that he can study you and learn more about the process. The information he got from your Vasto Lorde form was invaluable and we're still studying it. However an Arrancar is something we have never gotten an opportunity to go over before."

"Okay." Hidan said, not getting it yet, "I still don't understand why I have to be bound for this." He barely noticed Urahara walk up to him and tap him on the head with the bottom of his cane, freeing his Arrancar form, still wearing his black robe with red clouds, from the Gigai before he dragged it away to a safe distance.

"We're just going to test some things out on you Hidan." Urahara said, walking back over, spinning his cane as Tessai activated the small barrier around Hidan's body, "The barrier is just in case it's needed." He said before smashing Hidan hard on the head with his cane.

Hidan's head didn't even flinch, "Didn't hurt. Hierro (Steel Skin). One of the few techniques I was able to gleam from those three bitches that were telling me all about what Arrancar could do." A grin came to his face, "With my spiritual pressure you ain't gonna be able to hurt me with that weak piece of shit."

"Good to know." Urahara said in a mildly chilling manner, smiling in an unnerving fashion, "It seems that we can step it up a bit here in testing things out on you." He drew his Zanpakutou from within his cane, "A word of warning before we get started, my Zanpakutou didn't really like being called 'a weak piece of shit' so I'm sorry in advance for this. Okiro, Benihime (Awaken, Crimson Princess)." The Zanpakutou changed into a sleek looking medium-sized sword with a strange bend in the handle that had a tassel at the end. It was a rather unique looking weapon, Hidan had to say, but then again he had only seen Yoruichi, he didn't know anything about Shinigami or their Zanpakutou.

"What are you going to do with that?" Hidan asked amusedly, "Slice me up some bread and make me a sandwich? Make it roast beef if you are."

"Yeah…" Urahara said before clicking his teeth in a pitying fashion, "She didn't really like that remark either, so I'm sorry for this. You should be fine though, a little dinged up, but alive nonetheless… Maybe." Hidan's eyes widened as he saw the blade of the sword glow red, "First test; Arrancar durability in varying situations of intensity. Nake, Benihime (Sing, Crimson Princess)!"

"Wait, what?" Hidan managed to get out before Urahara slashed a blade of red energy at him that exploded on contact engulfing the entire area around him in smoke, "Ow! Goddamn it that fucking hurt you creepy bastard! You're lucky I was able to get the scythe up to block that shit!"

"Hm…" Urahara said, pulling out a clipboard from nowhere and writing things down, "The test subject seems alive and well for having taken a low-level blast from Benihime. I'd better up the intensity of the attack, or maybe have him take the hit without using his weapon to try and divert some of the impact." He shrugged and smiled, "Oh well, we have all the time in the world to run trials, and it looks like we won't have to immediately get him medical treatment after every attempt! Consider it training for your Hierro Hidan!"

"Go fuck yourself with your old man cane-sword!" Hidan yelled back at him.

XxX

(With Naruto and Yoruichi)

"Yeah…" Naruto thought, rubbing under his nose with a grin on his face, "Hidan should be able to take some of that. He's a tough guy."

Yoruichi shook her head in amusement before asking another question, "Okay, so what are we doing out here? This isn't exactly the most romantic place to take a girl for a vacation Naruto." She said jokingly, batting her eyelashes at him sweetly.

He shot his grin over to her, "You've obviously never been up around the Arctic Circle and seen the aurora borealis. Maybe I'll bring you back and see if you say that then." The blonde then stroked his chin, "I guess if you want to that badly I can take you somewhere on the way back, we can stop off somewhere. Can you speak any other languages or do I have to teach you before we go anywhere cool?"

Yoruichi smiled at him like a woman with a devious plan, "Why don't we save the sweet talk for later and you tell me why I'm out here freezing my tail off right now?"

"Fair enough." He said to her in agreement, "All over the world I have stashed things. Cool things. Treasures of my era that I managed to get a hold of."

Yoruichi blinked, "Are we going to go see that Gedou Mazou thing you told me about with all of the monsters in it?" She saw him double-take at her in shock.

"Fuck no!" Naruto said in alarm, "The less people who know exactly where that is, the better it is for everyone. It's in a place that only I can reach anyway. No, these are more like armories. I have a lot of weapons of a powerful nature and we're heading towards the one that I want the most right now. And don't complain about where I placed it. The rest aren't in places that are any easier to get to. Most of them are harder to get to, and more of a pain in the ass to find."

Yoruichi noticed that by this time Naruto had turned on his Rinnegan for some reason as they walked along, "So what exactly are we looking for again?"

"Something cool." Naruto alluded to cryptically that got Yoruichi to pout at not getting her curiosity sated, "It's one of my favorite old tools. I liked it so much that I couldn't keep it locked away like most of the others. I got it fixed and upgraded actually and learned how to use it for myself… then I hid it. But you Shinigami have your Zanpakutou, so I need a little something extra with some knockout power so to speak. Hence, I'm coming to retrieve my sword since the stronger of you guys can just cut through my kunai and hidden blades like they're cheap."

A smirk came to the face of Yoruichi at hearing how disgruntled he was at discovering the limits of his ninja tools when it came to melee attacks against Shinigami, "Well when you compare them to soul cutting swords they are cheap Naruto. Hopefully what you've dragged me out here to find isn't that easy to break."

"No way Yoruichi-chan." He said to her as they started climbing a gentle slope, "By the way, we're almost there." He then simply stopped in the middle of nowhere. Nothing around at all to indicate that anything was anywhere near them.

Folding her arms across her chest, Yoruichi looked around expectantly. She was prepared to see some elaborate, guarded shrine of some sort, "So where is this important weapon of yours? There's nothing here."

"Look underneath the underneath Yoruichi-chan." Naruto remarked to her as he started making hand-seals, ending with him clapping his hands together and stomping his foot on the ground, releasing a small tremor. In front of them the ice cracked and a stone pillar with a tablet on it rose through. Naruto drew a kunai and cut his palm, coating it completely in his own blood before slamming it onto the tablet and forcing it back down below the surface.

A whirlpool formation started forming in front of them through the snow, ice, and ground, spinning and forming a large crater, eventually stopping when a small person-sized hole opened up in the center of it. Naruto gestured for Yoruichi to follow him, getting a confused tilt of an eyebrow from her, but she followed nonetheless.

The hole in the ground led through an extremely narrow passage that had been coated over with permafrost, but other than that little natural occurrence it was actually well built and sturdy. As they entered a main chamber it was like the entire room was made out of hollowed out ice. Shelves on the back wall were stacked with scrolls that Naruto wasted no time in reading the kanji for and taking a few for himself, "These are just regular ninja tools. Kunai, shuriken, stuff like that. I didn't have any until we headed to the Soul Society where apparently blacksmiths aren't out of practice like most are here."

Nodding, Yoruichi looked around. The place was beautiful, "Did you make this place? How did you even find it outside? Everything looked the same."

"I have the best eyes in the world Yoruichi-chan." Naruto said as he walked towards a pedestal at the end of the room, "I can see things that nobody else can, like the chakra that kept this place hidden. All I needed was to be in the general area to find it. I used so much chakra making this place it's a beacon to me."

"Come to think of it I did sense a mild amount of Reiryoku when we started getting closer to this place." Yoruichi commented. It had been strange, there shouldn't have been any kind of spiritual energy out there at all, even the tiny amount she could feel.

"Yep." Naruto said as he looked at a sleek black box that was attached to the pedestal, "What better place to hide something away from people than in the middle of fucking nowhere, with absolutely no indicators as to anything being hidden? I have about twelve different places like this." He bit his thumb and coated the tips of his fingers in blood before pressing them onto the box and pulling them away to make a long chain of hand-seals.

Walking over to him and the box, Yoruichi smirked at seeing what Naruto was doing, "You certainly have one hell of a security system for a world without ninjas."

Naruto rolled his eyes with a good-natured smile on his face as he continued his hand-seals, "You've seen TV and the news. Archaeologists find shit like my place all the time. On the off chance someone does discover this place they won't be able to take a single thing I have for themselves without the ability to use chakra or the knowledge of my security code to open the cases for my real weapons." He finished his hand-seals and placed his hand back on the box, getting a satisfying click for his troubles.

As he opened the box, Yoruichi looked at it intently to see what treasure Naruto had brought them out to the ass-end of nowhere to retrieve. Upon the box being fully opened, all that lay inside, sitting on an ornate velvety cushion of sorts was the hilt of a sword that ended in a crossguard. The dark-skinned noble's eye twitched at seeing it, "That's it?"

"That's it." Naruto confirmed, happily picking up the hilt and placing it in his pocket before leaving the hiding place, whistling a happy tune to himself that echoed through the chamber and the tunnel.

Yoruichi palmed her face and followed him out, "You dragged me halfway across the world for the hilt of a sword?"

"Yep."

"Is there a blade to it that you've got to go somewhere else to in order to find it? You know, so that no one else but you could ever use the sword even if they found one part?"

"Nope."

Yoruichi was radiating pure displeasure as she watched Naruto close the whirlpool crater back up, leaving the area looking like they had never been there with the exception of their footprints that would soon be covered up, "So it's purely for sentimental value or something?"

Naruto scoffed, "Hell no. This is a mission based on pure practicality dear." He said, fishing the hilt back out of the pocket. He chuckled when he saw Yoruichi glare hatefully at it, thinking that their time and effort had been for nothing in particular, "This is one of the coolest things that I own."

"It looks like junk." She said, still not convinced in the least that this trip was even the least bit productive.

"Yeah, whatever." Naruto grumbled rather irritably before holding the hilt out in front of her indifferent face, "This is the Raijin no Ken (Sword of the Thunder God), and you'd better recognize and respect my archaic swag!" After yelling that, a long blade with bright yellow energy just pouring from it, making it glow brightly, emerged from the hilt, almost getting Yoruichi to recoil in surprise, "The force is with _me_, dattebayo!"

"What the hell is that thing?" Yoruichi said in response, rubbing her eyes at being damn near blinded by Naruto's unassuming weapon, "Was that electricity?"

Naruto twirled it around in his hand a few times in a way that he found himself getting re-familiarized with wielding it, "Yes it was. This sword is infused with pure electrical energy and could work as its own power source with the perpetual amount of juice it churns out. It seriously fucking hurts too, even when you're not being cut with it. Just touching this thing sucks."

Getting the stars from nearly being blinded out of her eyes, Yoruichi then fully took notice of the sword, "You said you reforged it?"

"I had it reforged, yeah." Naruto said, turning it down and returning it to its hilt form, "It really wasn't made any better than any other sword I had seen before. Other than the electricity thing there wasn't too much special about it. I even broke it before, me and Sasuke. I had to get it redone with the best metal I could possibly find, and now it's not only way tougher, I can do all sorts of cool things with it." He then turned a short look towards her, "Where's your Zanpakutou? I've never even seen it before."

She waved that little question off effortlessly, "I don't like using it that much so I just don't. I _was_ a captain though so be assured that I have one and it's just as powerful as any other."

Naruto nodded, "I never implied that it wasn't, I just wanted to know why you never seem to have it on you… it's not like you really need it anyway." He then looked at the hilt of the Raijin no Ken and grinned at it, "I missed you my super-sweet sword. Those Shinigami are going to piss their pants when they see what I upgraded you to do."

After getting over the surprise of his weapon, Yoruichi smiled at him, 'He seems so excited just because he has his old weapon back. It doesn't really take much to make Naruto happy does it? But I guess that after the story he told me he has to take every bit of pleasure from life he can get, with as long as it is and with everything he had to and still has to do.' She then snapped back to reality when she realized that Naruto had been asking her something, "Huh? I'm sorry, could you say that again?"

Naruto did as he was requested, "I said where do you want me to take you Yoruichi-chan? All I came out here for was the Raijin no Ken and to get a ton of my ninja tools for my surplus at the base. And you were a good girl in coming with me without a fight at all like the last time. I know you hate your Gigai. That means I owe you a fantastic vacation to the destination of your choice."

She gave him a look of mild distrust, "And you'll take me anywhere I want to go?"

"Anywhere at all." Naruto said, confirming it firsthand, "Just tell me where and I'll take you anywhere, we'll do whatever you want. Money is literally no object, and you'd be worth it. We might not get a chance to until after everything settles down and my team is all set up for the moment, but I've got all the time in the world."

"I'll hold you to that." Yoruichi said in a voice that relayed her satisfaction with the terms given to her as they continued to walk back to civilization.

XxX

(Three Days Later – Karakura Town – Urahara Shop)

"Here you are Mister Hidan." Ururu said meekly, handing Hidan, who was back in his Gigai with bandages all over random points on his body, a cup of tea. The newly turned Arrancar accepted the tea with an irritable grunt as he stared across the table at Urahara who had his clipboard out and was writing notes again.

"So you say that pulling your mask off turned you into an Arrancar?" He asked Hidan who grunted in affirmation, though he was still glaring at him heatedly, "Still, you're extremely strong for an Arrancar or so I've heard. A Hollow with powers reminiscent of a Shinigami." He said with a serious inflection, 'So it wasn't enough for you to ruin all of those lives 110 years ago was it Aizen? You used the Hougyoku to make your own army. What the hell do you think you're doing Aizen?'

He was snapped out of thinking for himself when Hidan spoke up rather irritably, "So after the little torture session that you called tests are you going to hurry up and build that training room in the basement of our base? I need to start getting my powers down."

"Oh yeah, sure." Urahara said, getting back to his normal airhead personality, "I'll start installing it later today, thanks for all the help, and for not trying to kill me once I was done studying your Arrancar form."

Hidan stared at the cane resting near the table, "That Zanpakutou… it's an evil weapon of mass destruction. And you say that every Shinigami has one?" He shook his head and took a sip of his tea, "Yeah, I'm really glad I'm on Uzumaki's side now. Fighting you and yours would be more trouble than it seems to be worth, even for the glory of Jashin-sama." He then thought of something, "Oh, by the way, Uzumaki called the base and told me he found what he left to go get. He and the sexy lady with him should be back later in the week."

Urahara pulled out his fan and held it in front of his face, "Oh, well that's good. Because I was contacted by Yamamoto and there's something that Uzumaki-san is going to want to know that's about to go down."

Hidan stared at the Shinigami scientist before smirking, "Is it the kind of something that will piss him off?"

Urahara made a thoughtful noise before responding, "I wouldn't say so, I would say that it's the kind of something that would make his life more difficult for the time being. It _might_ make him angry depending on how he feels about it thought."

Hidan shrugged, "Meh, it's better than nothing I guess." He said before downing the rest of his tea, "Could you get that little girl back in here to get me a refill? I've got a man's thirst here. I never want to see your damn Zanpakutou's release ever again."

XxX

(With Naruto and Yoruichi)

The layover from their flight out of Canada back to Japan stopped late over in Hawaii, thus Naruto got Yoruichi and himself a place to stay for the night. There was also no real rush now that he had what he had left Karakura Town to find, so as long as they got back in a good amount of time there wasn't anything anyone could say about anything.

Grateful to be out of the Arctic Circle and in a more enjoyable climate, Yoruichi, in a loose violet shirt and black skirt, stretched out on the bed of the hotel suite that Naruto had bought out for them, looking out of a rather large window that led to a balcony. For only staying for one night, he certainly didn't spare any expense. He had swiftly asked if anyone had booked the best suite they had and when he was informed that no one had he had quickly snatched it up for them.

"Where do you get all of this money from?" Yoruichi asked the blonde man near the bed, who was raiding the mini-fridge without a care, "Your books couldn't possibly sell that well that money would really be no object like this."

Naruto looked up from the fridge quizzically with a bottle of water sticking out of his mouth. Pulling the beverage away he blinked and addressed her question, "Well yeah, my books really do sell that much. No joke. And I transfer money to new accounts for every normal lifetime I've lived. Then that account makes money, and then you've got to account for all of the interest I've accumulated too. There isn't any reason that I wouldn't be totally loaded, especially since I don't use that much money at all." He then grinned at her, "But you're so worth it Yoruichi-chan."

"Aww." Yoruichi said playfully, reaching over and giving Naruto's cheek a pinch, "You're so sweet to me Naruto." She then blinked and decided to ask a question, "Why _are _you so sweet? Not just to me, but to every girl you meet? It's not just because you're a womanizer, it doesn't seem that simple."

Naruto averted his eyes away from her and returned to digging through the fridge, "A woman brought me into the world and gave her life for me, I've had my life saved more times than I can count by women, I've had my ass handed to me more times than I can count by women, and a woman even brought me back from the goddamn dead and gave me a chance to correct my ultimate mistake. Because of those reasons I treasure all women, not just for physical reasons, but because I've experienced both ends of the spectrum. You are capable of being bonafide angels of mercy, and merciless destroyers." He finished with a smile, "Any girl that thinks that giving me the time of day is worth her while ends up being special to me."

'It's amazing that you didn't grow bitter and angry with time. You're just one big softie despite all of the idiocy and power aren't you?' Yoruichi rolled over onto her back and let out a yawn, "I think jetlag is just a myth. The changing time-zones didn't mean anything to me, I'm so tired."

"Get some sleep then." Naruto said, standing up from his crouch by the mini-fridge to leave the room, "I'll hit the couch in the other room and I'll see you in the morning."

Yoruichi rolled her eyes as she jumped out of bed and grabbed a hold of his arm, "Oh don't start acting like a prude now. You've slept in the same place as me before, and this time there's no one here. You're not going to be dropping all of that money just so you can sleep on a chair somewhere."

Naruto looked back at her before smirking and walking towards her, getting her to back up slowly, "So you don't want me to leave." He said lowly, getting a matching smirk from Yoruichi who shook her head, "Now why would that be?"

"You paid for this place." She said, letting him wrap an arm around her waist and pull her close to him, "And I think I'm getting used to sleeping on top of you. I don't think I could get to sleep in such a foreign place without an immortal pillow." She turned her golden colored eyes up at him and gave him a quivering-eyed look, "Or would you really make me sleep all by myself?"

He had to avert his eyes away from hers, even after more years than anyone could count he was still a sucker for anything that a girl close to him requested of him, not that he would have even turned her down for something like this anyway.

XxX

(Two Hours Later)

"So what's the next plan?" Yoruichi asked Naruto, laying her head on his bare chest. Each time they slept together they had been getting progressively closer and closer to one another, so much so that now neither of them could care less about the other sleeping in their undergarments, "When we get back to Karakura what are we going to do?"

Naruto sighed, watching the purple hair of Yoruichi raise and fall along with his chest, "First and foremost we need to get you an office space, then Hidan needs to get himself used to whatever he can do as an Arrancar or else he wouldn't be as useful as he could be otherwise. Even if all he used was his Gigai and his ninjutsu he wouldn't be much of a match for anything stronger than regular Hollows. His Gigai body doesn't have enough chakra for him to readily use any yet. It would take years for him to get back up to speed with that."

Yoruichi nodded in agreement. It was clear that Hidan had a lot of power, but he needed to know how to use it otherwise it was all but useless to them, "So what are we going to do about Hueco Mundo?"

"We have two options." Naruto said, "We could go back in and try to get more information on the place because we don't have much at all right now, we might even be able to launch a preemptive strike if we get our bearings fast enough, or we can wait for something to happen in the world of the living. I have some things that need doing around Karakura Town anyway, and having too much on my plate at once wouldn't exactly be the best thing." He looked down at the woman laying on his chest, "You on the other hand, are going to help me scout for more people. I've seen your Shinigami divisions, four or five people does not make a very deep and comprehensive group."

"And if there's anyone in particular I like and think we should have?" She wondered, looking up at him with an expression reminiscent of a cat that had just swallowed the canary.

Naruto chuckled at the look on her face, "Then you can tell me about them and we can see if they're up to snuff and interested in joining." He then rolled his eyes, "You still want all of Ichigo's friends don't you? I'm telling you they won't do it unless he joins, and he won't." Scratching the top of his head he added something on to that, "And besides, I have to steer him towards Shinji and the other Visoreds. It's too dangerous to leave him to roam and fight without him knowing about his Hollow. I kind of want to slap Urahara again for doing that, this is his fault." He said in a rather irritable manner before Yoruichi's mouth covered his.

The female companion of the immortal Uzumaki pulled away after a moment and placed a finger on his nose, "Don't blame Kisuke. Ichigo will be able to handle it, just do what you need to when school gets back into session." He grumbled about going to school again, getting Yoruichi to giggle and kiss him again, "It's a good cover and you know it. Maybe you can actually get Ichigo to trust you because he still doesn't."

"Like I care what that brat thinks." Naruto said, "He can not trust me all he wants while I'm saving his ass again and see how much sense that makes." He grinned at Yoruichi and wrapped his arms around her, "He's just mad that I stole his sexy temporary sensei away from him."

Yoruichi let off a seductive laugh and pushed her forehead and nose against Naruto's, "Oh, you stole me away did you? So does that mean that when I'm telling you stuff you need to know about the Soul Society or things in general you'll call me Yoruichi-sensei?" She basically purred out to him.

"Only if when I buy you stuff and do awesome things you'll call me Naruto-sama." Naruto fired back in a low voice that could match hers, "You really want to do this Yoruichi-chan? You're really towing it close to that line of no return."

She grinned at his question, "Oh well in that case if you're that worried about me second-guessing myself I could just get up and get dressed and we can ignore-." She let out a muffled laugh when Naruto cut her off by kissing her again, eventually she simply closed her eyes and enjoyed it as she started to duel tongues with the blonde shinobi beneath her.

Lemon Start

Any inhibitions that Yoruichi thought Naruto had about going through with the rest of their nighttime activities went right out the window when she felt him remove her bra and cast it aside swiftly, 'Someone knows what they want I see.' She thought as she ran her hands through Naruto's spiky hair and enjoyed his fingertips softly dancing on her bare back.

'Well that flirty side of hers isn't making up for any shyness in the bedroom.' Naruto thought to himself as he let Yoruichi begin to dominate the tongue play between them. He let his hands go lower down her torso and firmly grip her backside before giving her a solid spank.

After feeling the hit on her butt, Yoruichi sat up on top of Naruto and gave him an inquisitive look. Naruto frowned, thinking he had offended her, "You didn't like that? Sorry."

Yoruichi broke into a smile again, "I didn't say I didn't like it. I just didn't expect that." He grabbed both of his hands at the wrists and placed them directly on her bountiful chest, "Now isn't it so much better to be able to touch instead of just look. Be gentle though." She moaned out when she felt him begin to softly squeeze her breasts.

"Sure thing Yoruichi-chan." Naruto chuckled out when he saw Yoruichi close her eyes and enjoy the attention his hands were giving her. Hey, practicing hand-seals were good for more than just setting up a jutsu, "I won't hurt you."

In retaliation for that remark that seemed like it was underestimating her, Yoruichi made a soft and steady grinding motion with her hips on top of Naruto's, teasing his erection, "Oh, you couldn't hurt me if you tried. Whether I'm in a Gigai or not."

"Understood…" He managed to hiss out, fighting off an urge to flip her off of him and start trying to fuck her lights out. She was making this absolutely agonizing, and she knew exactly what she was trying to do to him, not that she readily cared about that at the moment. He guessed he was going to have to make her care about how she was making him feel by doing the same to her. In an effort to fight back against his dark-skinned goddess and her ability to tease him even now when he was so close to what they both wanted, Naruto removed one hand from her breast and slipped it underneath the waistband of her panties.

Yoruichi tried and failed to bite back a gasp of surprise when she felt the very experienced fingers of Uzumaki Naruto begin playing with her sweet spot, "Oh my God…" She whispered out to herself, but Naruto managed to hear her.

He had two fingers inserted inside of her, pumping in and out of her at varying speeds while his other hand slowly stroked her backside and held her in place, "Has it been a while? Me too."

"Y-Yes." Yoruichi managed to stutter out, trying to get over the shocking pleasure she was starting to feel. She started to buck her hips according to the way that Naruto's fingers guided her and looked down at his face with hazy golden eyes, "Would you laugh if I said that if you had left the room tonight I would have probably jumped you in your sleep? It's really been almost one-hundred years."

Naruto clicked his tongue, rather impressed with her holding out from urges for that long, "Fifty years for me." He admitted to her, smirking at how she was hardly listening to him, just leering at him with cloudy, lust-filled eyes, "Don't hold back on my account Yoruichi-chan." He said to her, and as if a switch turned in her head she slowly drew herself off of his fingers, removed the last of her undergarments, and crawled around him on the bed before she pinned one of his arms down with her knee and draped her other leg across his other side, pinning his other arm and straddling his neck.

"You told me not to hold back." Yoruichi said, licking her own lips as she looked down on her prone lover. She felt Naruto easily free both of his arms and slide her further forward to where he began to orally pleasure the female Shinigami. Yoruichi grabbed two fists full of Naruto hair and pulled him towards her so that she could feel his tongue go to work deeper, 'A human. A human is making me feel like this.' She thought, freeing one hand from Naruto's hair to begin playing with her nipples, getting them to harden.

She heard Naruto mumble something out beneath her, but couldn't make out what he said, however the vibrations from his voice simply added to her experience, "I'm sorry, could you repeat that Naruto, I didn't catch that?" Yoruichi said with a content grin on her face. She let out a soft moan when he did, and she felt him laugh she assumed. As if suddenly realizing something, Yoruichi got up off of Naruto's face, confusing him. He knew that she hadn't climaxed for a fact. Yoruichi turned her beautiful body around and turned to position herself on Naruto's face again, only now she was facing the direction of his legs, "I'm sorry, I was being so selfish." She said as she pulled his boxers off.

Naruto's eyes widened when he felt Yoruichi's warm mouth take in his full length, "You're not selfish at all Yoruichi-chan." He said in a rather strained voice and laugh. If that was what she called acting selfish he hadn't minded in the least. Right now she was his, and he would have done anything for her at this moment. The fact that her mouth and tongue had found a way to reciprocate his efforts to please her earlier made him realize that fact. He pulled Yoruichi back down over his mouth and returned to his own efforts to make Yoruichi cum.

Yoruichi bobbed her head up and down, her mouth around Naruto's dick. Her head was in a lucid state of satisfaction that she attempted to voice with moans of delight that wound up being muffled by Naruto's tool. She took her time drawing it slowly in and out of her mouth, giving sharp, long licks from base to head and back down. Shihouin Yoruichi was a heartbreaker and she wanted Naruto to pine for her after this was over, but that course of action was beginning to backfire as she knew damn well that she would want to do this again just as much as he did.

And it was evident that Naruto knew what he was doing from his end as well. His tongue flicked against her clit again and again and he could feel her shiver on top of him in delight. Yoruichi wasn't bad at what she was doing, not by any stretch of the imagination. However having written entire volumes of books on this matter it wasn't as if Naruto was a novice at having sex. The thing about it was, he wanted Yoruichi to want more. He wanted to give her enough to make her want to come back to him, because him begging her wasn't exactly in his plans for the future. It had been a long time since there was anyone in the world that needed him, even if it was just for sex he didn't really mind at this point.

So at this point it was a basic battle of wills, 'I'm going to make her/him love me. She'll/He'll need me when this is over.'

Naruto stopped eating Yoruichi out and patted the beautiful woman on the bottom, "Get off Yoruichi-chan." She reluctantly did as asked and turned towards him with a curious look on her face. Why did he make them stop? There was a smirk on her face that intimidated/excited her, and before she could even voice either feeling she found herself pushed over on her knees, bending forward with her arms keeping herself from falling on her face.

Naruto positioned himself behind her and slowly immersed himself inside of Yoruichi's soft folds. He began thrusting in and out of her, keeping his hands on her hips to guide her towards and away from him. Yoruichi grabbed a fist full of the sheets on the bed tightly and bit her lip, biting back a loud moan, "Naruto… you cheeky bastard. I didn't tell you to do that." She said breathily, trying to sound angry, but there was absolutely no anger in her voice at all.

"No, you didn't." He admitted as he simply continued to screw his first recruit to his unit from behind, "But you never said I couldn't. Besides, you know you like it." He said, giving her ass another slap, similar to earlier.

"Jerk." She said bitingly before a rather sharp made her let out a short yell. Naruto lifted one of her legs so that he could get at her from a better angle, "You're lucky I'm in my Gigai or you'd be begging me for release right now." Yoruichi mumbled out with a smile, looking back at him with a wink.

Naruto wrapped his arms around her body and pulled her up so that they were both sitting on their knees as he continued to fuck Yoruichi. Naruto started biting and sucking gently on Yoruichi's neck, trying to leave hickeys on her while his hands pinched and pulled at her nipples. Yoruichi had an arm wrapped around his head and neck to hold him to her, "You can't make me cum Naruto. You're going to finish first." She grinned when she heard him chuckle through his kisses on her neck.

"Who's the one in control here?" He asked her in a whisper before nibbling on her earlobe, "I'm technically_ your_ boss. If I say 'cum for me Yoruichi-chan' that's what I expect. Like so." He said shifting them once more with him sitting down, still inside of Yoruichi while holding her legs under her thighs to keep them spread open. Hearing her loud love cries was like music to his ears once he began bouncing her up and down on top of his cock.

Yoruichi started shaking her head from side to side, no longer having a voice to scream with due to requiring to take another breath if she wanted to keep making noise. He had her completely at his mercy. All she could do was ride it out, literally. And it wasn't like she had any issues with that, 'I can't take it, it feels like he's splitting me in half!'

Because he _was_ her boss, he _did_ know exactly what he was doing, and she _had_ been openly teasing him since day one of their strange, yet appealing relationship.

She could grant him a little payback, especially since it would end with her getting off one way or another. She'd just make sure that she'd get him back later without her Gigai, then he'd see who would dominate who.

"I'm going to cum, Yoruichi-chan." Naruto said in warning to her as he continued to bounce her up and down on his pole. He didn't want to just assume that Yoruichi would let him shoot his load inside, "I'll let you-."

"If you take me off before I finish I swear I'll beat the daylights out of you." Yoruichi screamed in threat as she could feel her own climax building and if he didn't let her reach it because he thought he was being a gentleman she didn't know what she would do to him. All she could see were stars clouding her eyes and from there it didn't take long for her tighten around him and let out one more cry signifying her release, "Naruto you're so fucking good!"

"Kami you're so tight Yoruichi-chan!" Naruto said when he felt her clamp down on his dick. That was the last straw for him as he finally came inside of his gorgeous dark-skinned lover. He removed his hands from beneath her thighs and wrapped his arms around her, rubbing her stomach softly.

Yoruichi's breathing began to calm and slow as she noticed that Naruto was still buried inside of her. Before she could say anything, Naruto pulled her off of him with a pop. She tried to pout, but only wound up smiling and laughing as he sat her down between his legs and leaned back against the headboard of the bed. She took after his example and leaned back against his chest, letting him rub her body freely, "Yes, we'll have to do this again Naruto. Again, and again, and again." She looked back at him and grabbed one of his hands to kiss it, "In just a minute as a matter of fact, unless you think you can't take it?" She teased.

Naruto sighed and looked out the window at the dark night, "What time is the flight in the morning?" He asked her.

"Um…" She put a finger to her lips as she tried to think, "We're supposed to take off at 8:15 a.m. Why?"

"Because…" He replied with a huge grin to her, "We can sleep on the plane. I'm not about to let my night with a goddess end after just one round. Now do you think _you_ can take it?" His hard-on returned with a vengeance when Yoruichi seductively narrowed her eyes at him and crawled out of his lap only to lay down on her back with her legs spread for him.

She let out a small laugh as she left herself prone for him, "I know that sitting in that damn airline seat after we're done is going to be hell, but for now take me to heaven Naruto." Yoruichi said as Naruto crawled towards her and positioned himself over top of her, kissing her deeply before they started up again.

End Lemon

XxX

(Three Days Later – Karakura Town)

After returning to Karakura Town, Naruto was visited by Urahara in regards to what he had found out about Hidan and Arrancar in general. If this was what they were to be fighting he decided that studying the enemy now instead of waiting until later would be for the best all around.

Hidan stood in the training room that Urahara had somehow carved out while Naruto and Yoruichi were gone while Urahara stood in front of him, a clear see-through board in front of the Arrancar with certain places on his anatomy circled on the board and labeled. The scientist had a long pointer as he gestured towards Hidan as if he were conducting a lecture, "Okay, Hidan here, as we all know, is the Shinigami-Hollow known as an Arrancar."

"Duh." Naruto, Yoruichi, all of Urahara's assistants, and even Hidan behind the clear board said simultaneously before Yoruichi continued, "We already knew that Kisuke. I don't even know why that required repeating."

With his fan out in front of his face he turned towards Yoruichi, a gleam in his eye, "Well, well. Unless you're willing to tell us what you were up to with Uzumaki-san while you were gone I would suggest that you let me finish."

"What?" She said in reply, doing a valiant job of keeping her blush nonexistent while Naruto had a huge smirk on his face at her side, "We just went to get a weapon for him that he had hidden."

Hidan smirked and shared a look with Urahara, "Yeah, I'm sure he 'hid his weapon' alright." Both men started laughing until they felt Yoruichi's Reiatsu spike threateningly, "Okay bucket-hat, back to explaining this shit."

"I agree." Urahara said hurriedly before smacking the board with his pointer, "Now, Arrancar are able to fire Cero blasts just like regular Hollows are able to, and from what we have seen of Hidan he also has the hole on his body that is the tell-tale sign that he's still a Hollow. Apparently the Hollow that transforms into an Arrancar must be of staggering power for the change to even provide a relevant amount of challenge. Menos or higher."

Naruto raised his hand like they were in class, "What about how he's wired?" He got questioning looks from everyone around him, "Well, I'm just saying, when Hidan was a Vasto Lorde he seemed was more bloodthirsty, even for his normal personality. How many times did you go into Hueco Mundo when I was gone?" He asked the silver-haired ex-shinobi.

Hidan held up one finger, "Just once for like an hour or two to get to combat training in with the stuff I felt like working on."

"Vasto Lorde Hidan would have been chomping at the bit to just stay in there." Yoruichi pointed out.

"About that." Urahara continued, pointing towards Hidan's head, smacking the pointer off of the board repeatedly to annoy him, "Arrancar share a similar anatomy to that of Shinigami. Everything is where it would be for a Shinigami, his Saketsu (Soul Chain) and Hakusui (Soul Sleep) are in the same places, and his mental capacities aren't naturally fueled by battle and killing the way other Hollows are."

Hidan stopped him to point something out, "Actually yeah they are, but like I said, I'm so used to it all of the fucking time even back when I was alive it's like a little tickle in the back of my head every so often. But I know how to adhere to standards so it's cool. I won't kill any of you…" He said with a rather dark grin that made the kids, Ururu and Jinta, shiver somewhat.

Urahara tapped the board repeatedly to get attention back on him, "Now the most interesting thing I've found by far in the time I've been studying the results from the things I've done to Hidan are the other powers that they have. An Arrancar possesses the power to harden their skin by compressing their spiritual pressure. The stronger they are the better the defense is." He then sniffed haughtily, "It's still by no means impenetrable though."

"Stop preening and get back to the explanation before I shove those sandals up your ass." Hidan growled out irritably.

"Ara, don't be so bloodthirsty." Urahara said brightly before doing just as instructed, "Now the powers, as I said, are incredibly interesting. Our resident Arrancar here has the potential to mimic the Shinigami use of Shunpo and other Hohou skills in his own way with enough work. In addition to that he has variants of the Cero that he may or may not be able to use if he had the ingenuity and training to do so. But that's not even the most interesting thing." He tapped on the clear board around Hidan's hands.

"These are." Hidan said with a grin, holding up his three-bladed scythe in one hand and his strange cylindrical device in the other.

"Exactly." Urahara said in confirmation as he seemed rather excited or shaken by what he was about to say to them, "These two weapons are Hidan's Zanpakutou." Yoruichi gave him an utterly stunned look that didn't fail to satisfy him, "Yes I'm certain before you even start asking. The bulk of Hidan's Reiryoku are sealed within these two weapons, much like a sealed Zanpakutou.

"So…" Jinta said, trying to get his question out the right way, "These Arrancar things have Shikai and Bankai just like a Shinigami would have?"

"Oh no…" Urahara began to laugh, calming some of them down somewhat, until he suddenly stopped and got a serious look on his face, "The form that Hidan's weapons and by proxy any other Arrancar's weapon are in at all normal times are their Shikai. He does have the equivalent of a Bankai however, though I have yet to know what that is. All Arrancar possess this ability."

"-Except me." Hidan said with a twitching eye, "Bastards…"

Urahara turned towards him, "You'll find yours very soon, we'll help you figure it out."

Naruto then started thinking of his own run-in with an Arrancar back in the Forest of Menos, "So that woman we met that was so strong… she can get even stronger?" He said, sharing a look with Yoruichi before he shrugged, "I should have known. No one I ever meet is as strong as they can be the first time I see them." He gestured towards the female Shinigami and exclaimed, "You see what I was talking about Hidan? I swear, it's like a total theme in my life to be close to women that can beat the shit out of me."

"I'm starting to get that picture." He replied, nodding sagely.

Naruto then stood up abruptly and walked over to Urahara, "Oh, by the way, Hidan needs a way to get out of his Gigai so I brought you…" He reached into his pocket and pulled out a scroll that he unsealed, "These!"

Hidan let out an almost girlish shriek when he saw what Naruto brought, "You got my scythe and pike back!" And brought them back he did, however from the rust and the broken blades it certainly seemed like Father Time had taken a sledgehammer to them, "What the fuck happened to them?"

Naruto gave Hidan a dry look, "It's been buried for over 2000 years, what the fuck did you expect them to look like? At least the pike can be fixed. I don't know anyone good enough to fix the scythe up."

Urahara picked up the pike and retracted it, noticing it looked just like the cylinder that Hidan had as an Arrancar, as did the scythe, "This is all I need to give Hidan something to get him out of his Gigai. I'll even get it all fixed up for you." He looked over at Naruto expectantly, "For a nominal fee…"

Rolling his eyes, Naruto relented, "Fine, you get the next book set to be released, signed copy." Urahara let out a cheer while Hidan got back into his Gigai and stretched back out. The informal meeting had begun to break down and everyone had been prepared to go off on their own business when something hit Naruto mentally and his eyes widened, "Uh-oh." He said before damn near sprinting from the training room underneath the office building his base was located in and rushing to the front gate.

XxX

Stopping outside, he whipped his head around rapidly. Naruto knew that he hadn't been wrong about what he assumed he had seen. His Kage Bunshin sentry wouldn't have dispelled itself by punching itself in the back of the head, and what it had seen before its untimely demise hadn't been fabricated because it was an actual memory, "So where in the hell would-?" He said before he disappeared in a puff of smoke.

"Damn it… Stupid, slow Gigai." Soi-Fon said to herself, remembering his Kage Bunshin technique before she found herself picked up from behind in a huge hug that kept her arms bound.

"I knew I wasn't crazy!" Naruto said happily as he held Soi-Fon off of the ground close to his chest, ignoring her angrily kicking feet and shouts to let her go, "Hello my sweet Jooubachi! Did you miss me?"

"Like a beating from-." She was about to answer with a snide comment until she registered what she heard him call her, "Wait, Jooubachi (Queen Bee)? Why are you calling me that now?" Soi-Fon asked, stopping her legs from kicking.

Naruto shrugged, still not letting go of her, "I don't know. You told me not to call you my little bee anymore so I had to come up with something didn't I?" He then realized where she was, "Now what are you doing here? Did you come to visit Yoruichi-chan?" He gave her a grin, "Or me?"

Soi-Fon tried to cover the flustered look on her face as her legs began kicking again, trying to force him to let her go, "Still as agitating as ever Uzumaki…" She managed to growl, "Let me go and I'll tell you why I'm here." He immediately dropped her, and once she landed on her feet she turned around and punched him hard in the stomach. When he didn't double over like he usually did she looked up at his grinning face wondering why.

"You don't use Gigai very much do you?" Naruto said to her, voice full of amusement as she glared up at him, "You don't get it, you're as weak as a regular human girl right now as long as you're in that thing. You could hit me all day and I wouldn't blink. The body I fought with in the Soul Society was my real body that I always use in this world, so I'm always as tough as nails. Now why are here at my humble office?"

Soi-Fon's glare dissipated and Naruto took in her appearance in her Gigai. She wore a black shoulder-cut long-sleeved shirt, tight blue jeans that stopped low at her calf, and sandals. She certainly didn't have any trouble fitting in with normal people in the world of the living, "We're here as the support force for you and your unit, as Yamamoto-sotaichou hadn't figured that you had finished putting it together yet."

"We?" Naruto repeated questioningly until Soi-Fon snapped her fingers.

"Can we come out now taichou?" From around the corner of the building, Omaeda poked his head out along with Nemu.

Soi-Fon rolled her eyes, "Yes you can come out now. I didn't kill Uzumaki… this time." She said, getting a sweatdrop out of Naruto.

Shrugging, Omaeda walked from around the corner wearing a black suit that managed to fit his sizeable frame. He also had a pair of black sunglasses on his face. Nemu had on a grey button-up blouse and still had on her red choker along with a yellow tight skirt and black high-heeled sandals.

Naruto scratched his hair as the two lieutenants walked over, "I can understand your lieutenant being here, but why is Nemu-chan here?"

Soi-Fon shook her head, "I have no clue. Omaeda and myself are here because as members of the Onmitsukidou we can carry out this glorified scouting mission, just the two of us, especially with you and Yoruichi-sama here as well." She gestured towards Nemu, "I assume she is here because of a need to analyze and study the findings of Hueco Mundo. It isn't really a place that Shinigami readily go to as there isn't really a way out, until now."

It sounded appropriate enough to Naruto. He had heard of far worse reasons for other things than that in his time. With that being over with and done, Naruto turned and led them inside of the building, "Well then let's find you guys a place to stay while we're here. We can work out a mission plan later."

As they walked inside and saw the place had been restored to a very nice atmosphere with neatly painted walls, colored maroon on the first floor. However there wasn't anything in the wide open area which brought Soi-Fon to scoff, "You'd better not have Yoruichi-sama staying here." She said, believing her mistress should have more appropriate accommodations to her stature.

Naruto looked rather offended, "Hey it's not bad, I haven't come up with a front for the place yet that's why it's empty down here, but I'm thinking about it. You haven't even seen the upper floors yet, it's better than Urahara's place that's for damn sure." He liked his little purchase, "Whatever, let's just set you guys up with a place to stay while you're here."

Well at least he had some support now. Yamamoto followed through on that front. He could head back into Hueco Mundo now while he had Yoruichi try to bolster his ranks. Maybe she could get Chad, Orihime, or maybe Ichigo to join up. He doubted it, but it was worth a try.

* * *

**Chapter done. Now I'm hungry and am going to grab lunch before it's training time. My broken hand that never received medical attention doesn't hurt so much anymore and I can make a fist and punch things… time to go punch things again.**

**Someone pointed out a fact, that Bleach despite its multitude of chapters didn't have much in the way of character development or stuff. It was a lot of fight scenes and stuff dealing with the people directly around Ichigo. My job is to not make this story a copy of the manga, which it won't be as you'll see very soon if you haven't already, and to help with that, a lot of my more favored characters will be getting some time in this story. **

**Anyway, I'll catch you guys later. Kenchi out.**


	13. It's A Gift And A Curse

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. What an existence.

**Chapter 13: It's a Gift… And A Curse**

* * *

Naruto, dressed in his usual street clothes of a dark-blue button-up shirt and a pair of black slacks and shoes, walked around the floor under the one his office/living quarters was situated on to check on his guests. Being filthy stinking rich due to the fact that the world was filled with perverts and had been for at least the last few hundred years or so, Naruto had been able to furnish the rooms that his inexhaustible work force of Kage Bunshin had set up extremely quickly after his purchase of the building.

Omaeda complained about the room Naruto provided him despite the fact that it was completely posh. Naruto's clones decided to be overachievers when they turned the place out and there was absolutely nothing to complain about. Each room was fucking awesome and Naruto knew it because his clones knew it. So he threatened to clobber the large fat man until he ran into the room and stifled about his lodgings.

Nemu wordlessly settled into her own room, she didn't show an opinion one way or the other. She simply said she would be speaking to him later and left it at that. Weird girl. Sweet, but very weird.

Soi-Fon found her room to be more than adequate and told Naruto as much. Each room was more along the lines of a suite, similar to his apartment that he had in his youth. Of course after hearing that, Naruto offered her a stay in his room for her time there… and she had punched him in the stomach again… and nothing happened, thus pissing her off further. She hated wearing a Gigai as much as Yoruichi did for pretty much the same reasons, for a different purpose of course.

"Wake up call!" Naruto yelled as he walked through the hall, "Breakfast is in thirty minutes. If you are not there then I _will_ eat your food and leave the empty plate in front of your door to taunt you!"

Soi-Fon's door opened to reveal her in her Gigai, fully dressed, "There's no reason to be so loud Uzumaki. I'm awake. I was up hours ago."

"Couldn't sleep?" He asked with a grin on his face, "You could always have come to my room Jooubachi if you were bored and wanted company." Soi-Fon's fist found its way into his stomach and the grin never dropped from Naruto's face, "You'd think by now that you'd know you can't hurt me in that thing."

Soi-Fon huffed and began following him down the hall as they went towards the rooms that the others had taken since she was already up and might as well find something to do at this point, "So how is your 'squad' supposedly coming along? This place seems very empty to me for what is supposedly supposed to be squad barracks and headquarters."

Naruto looked at the smaller woman in amusement, "I am building this thing from scratch with no system for filtering and getting recruits the way you guys get. There's no Academy for me." He smirked at her, "And that's why whoever I do end up with will be stronger than basically anyone in any of your squads in the Seireitei."

Soi-Fon narrowed her eyes at him, "Are you implying that we're weak?"

"Nope." Naruto quickly said, trying to keep Soi-Fon from actually being upset at him. There was a difference between the love taps he had been getting since their first fight and an actual angry Soi-Fon after him, "I'm just saying. I'm not getting any raw recruits the way you guys get. Everyone I've gotten so far can fight, no need to waste time training them." 'Well, except for maybe Hidan, but he seems to be getting things fairly quickly.' "And we're right in the center of the fire so to speak. Anyone that joins me is going to be awesome. Yoruichi-chan works for me, that should tell you all you need to know."

Soi-Fon blinked in shock before going over his last statement, "Yoruichi-sama works for you." She said as if it were some foreign concept, "But she was a captain! She led the Onmitsukidou! How can she work for you, and why didn't she come back to the Soul Society?"

Naruto shrugged, "Because she said there was no way in hell she was coming back just so that she could start all the way from the bottom again." He scratched his head while Soi-Fon gaped at him, "It sounds reasonable enough to me. Apparently I'm more fun than the Seireitei too." 'Damn right I am, especially _now_.' He thought to himself, but kept that from Soi-Fon lest she attempt to kill him for it.

"So she won't be coming back again…" Soi-Fon sounded rather dejected at that thought until Naruto flicked her forehead, "Ow! Uzumaki give me one reason not to kill you right now!" She threatened, holding her head and glaring at him.

Naruto pulled his hand back from his flick with a frown on his face, "I have free reign to travel the realm Jooubachi, and so does my squad if they can find some way to do it. Right now there are three of us that can do it. I can go from here to Hueco Mundo, and from Hueco Mundo to the Seireitei, but can't go from here to the Seireitei or vice-versa. Hidan's like that too."

Soi-Fon nodded, "Well that's because Hueco Mundo lies between the world of the living and the Soul Society. You need a path through the precipice world to get straight from here to there. But you're saying that Yoruichi-sama-."

"Yes, she can go wherever she wants whenever she wants due to her position on my squad." Naruto said, explaining one of the perks allowed by his group, "She's my number two anyway. I kind of need her if I'm ever going to pull this off. If you miss Yoruichi-chan a lot just tell her you want to see her more, or you could come here. I don't care we've got dozens of rooms, you can stay whenever you want."

They went down to the first floor where there was a kitchen for everyone and tables for plenty of people in case Naruto ever managed to get the place filled. Sitting at one of the tables was Hidan, hunched over a bowl of cereal.

Naruto shook his head as he walked up to the Arrancar who was shielding his bowl like he was in prison, "I told you breakfast would be done soon, you saw the clone go into the kitchen and start cooking. Why'd you get cereal?" Naruto then frowned at the type of cereal he was eating, "Why'd you get _that_ kind of cereal? Come on Hidan, the place is stocked and you picked that to eat?"

Hidan grunted unintelligibly and continued to eat, taking another spoonful and crunching loudly as Naruto sat down at the table. Soi-Fon walked over and took a long hard look at the silver-haired man systematically destroying a bowl of cornflakes and milk with a scowl on his face. He was a rather young looking man, not looking that much older than Naruto's outward appearance, maybe around twenty for humans, and had a rather angry looking appearance that probably didn't get much happier than what she was seeing now. He wore a black short sleeved shirt with a bunch of obscenities in kanji emblazoned on it, and black pants with white shoes. For some reason he had a strange cylinder thing around his neck as some form of a pendant or something

"So this is the first actual recruit of your team." Soi-Fon said as she sat down next to Naruto across from Hidan and stared at him, getting him to glare back at him as he continued to chew his food, "I don't know he doesn't seem that special."

Naruto let out a laugh and even Hidan let off an amused scoff at Soi-Fon's insinuation. Naruto patted Hidan on the shoulder, annoying his former enemy, "Hidan is very special my sweet Jooubachi. I know what I'm doing when I recruit, and Hidan's the man." He thumped him on the shoulder, "This is him in a Gigai too. The good kind, the kind where you can't sense his Reiatsu, otherwise you wouldn't be saying that."

Hearing that, Soi-Fon raised an eyebrow, "So take him out of it. I want to see what this person is capable of."

Naruto pointed at her, "It just so happens that I _won't_ be doing that right now. Mostly because of how you'd react, partly because Hidan doesn't need to leave his Gigai to beat any Hollow weaker than a Menos."

Soi-Fon's eye twitched, "How does he have a Gigai that can fight and I don't?"

Naruto and Hidan both smirked as the hidden Arrancar answered her, "Because when I was alive I mastered my body's energies. Every Gigai has the same energy in it so that it can mimic an actual human body, thus I can control it like I could when I was alive." He drank the milk at the bottom of the bowl and wiped his mouth, "So am I special enough yet bi-?" Naruto covered Hidan's mouth before he could finish his question with vulgarity.

"What was he about to say?" Soi-Fon asked dangerously. She couldn't hurt Naruto in her Gigai, she was about to find out if Hidan had the same thing about him.

"Don't start a fight in my kitchen please." Naruto asked desperately, "You can't kill Hidan's body anyway. While he's in his Gigai he's immortal."

Soi-Fon slowly reached for what looked to be a duck-headed candy dispenser while glaring at Hidan, "Then I guess I'll just have to get him out of his body won't I?"

Naruto didn't really feel like trying to come between the Mexican-standoff that was going on between Soi-Fon and Hidan, who instead of trying to extinguish the flames of the situation decided to gleefully dump gasoline on it as he grabbed the cylinder around his neck and extended the spike in it to come out.

Soi-Fon held the dispenser right by her mouth while Hidan held the spike right by where his heart would have been and the two just stared at each other, waiting on the other to move first.

Caught in the middle of what would no doubt end up going too far and wind up destroying his new super-sweet base, Naruto held his breath, as he felt that the slightest movement from either of them or him would set the entire thing off.

"Hey boss!" One of Naruto's clones yelled as he walked out of the kitchen into the room everyone would be eating in, "That new waffle iron is fucking badass, and-!" The clone stopped once he saw what was going on and turned abruptly to go back inside. It didn't feel like being painfully dispelled outside of a battle today.

Once again, everyone in the dining room sat frozen waiting for the action to jump off, until a rather sleepy sounding set of footsteps padded against the floor and walked into the room. Yoruichi walked in with her hair down and her golden eyes barely open, wearing a small white t-shirt and black panties. Ignoring everyone else she sat down next to Naruto and leaned against him tiredly, "Good morning Naruto…" She mumbled before pulling him down by his cheek and giving him a kiss on the lips.

Naruto gladly reciprocated the show of affection until he realized exactly who was on the other side of him. He didn't even bother turning around first, the gleefully amused expression on Hidan's face as he lowered his cylinder spike device told him all he needed to know. He simply sighed and sat Yoruichi up straight in her chair, "I love you Yoruichi-chan, but you just had to go and do that right here didn't you?" He quickly made the boar hand-seal, "Jinton: Mueishou (Swift Release: Shadowless Flight)!"

He vanished in a blur from his chair just as Soi-Fon swallowed the candy from her dispenser to leave her body and used Shunpo in an attempt to chase Naruto down, "What have you been doing with Yoruichi-sama!"

Yoruichi just blinked in confusion at the mayhem that had randomly set off, she then realized who it was that was in the room with them when she looked at Soi-Fon's Gikon (Artificial Soul) possessed body and blushed in embarrassment, "Oops, did I do that?" She looked at Soi-Fon's Gigai and then at Naruto's empty chair, "He should be okay, right?"

Hidan shrugged with a grin on his face, "I don't know, I don't care. All I know is that I got some entertainment with my breakfast and that ain't a bad thing."

Yoruichi shook her head, "So do you want me to help you train your powers today?"

A positive grunt came from Hidan, "Sure, why not? Uzumaki-brat said I'm supposed to get cracking on learning how to do more than just a Cero… but the Cero is so badass though!" He whined.

At that moment, Omaeda and Nemu walked into the dining room, "Why did I just sense Soi-Fon-taichou's Reiatsu spike?" Omaeda asked before seeing Soi-Fon's body with an uncharacteristically happy look on her face, "What? Why did she get out of her Gigai?" He asked, rather alarmed by the fact that she did such.

"To wring Uzumaki-brat's neck." Hidan supplied helpfully.

XxX

(Elsewhere in Karakura Town)

Naruto was frantically running for his life on the rooftops, jumping between them to keep going and stay off of the streets, "I swear this is total déjà vu…" He muttered to himself as he looked down at the butterfly mark on his chest, "Yeah, total déjà vu." He turned around to find Soi-Fon still hot on his heels, "Oh what's the matter Jooubachi? You can't catch me here? And you were so much more forceful in the Soul Society too."

"I'm under a power limiter you asshole, I'm barely at 30%!" Soi-Fon snapped at him with her Shikai out, "And I got you once already, just hold still and let me finish the job!"

"I let you hit me the first time!" Naruto said with a laugh, "Now chill out before we get busted! Normal people could actually get lucky and see _me_! You can't hit me, and there's no way I'm going to let you. Don't chase me all the way outside of the city. I swear I'll ditch you on the other end of the country and make you find your own way back to the base!"

Soi-Fon growled. Stupid limiters… she wasn't going to release enough of her power to adversely affect the environment and the humans around her, she just needed enough to shut Naruto up. If she were allowed enough power to use her Shunkou she probably would, "Who could possibly see us? No one can sense us except for Kurosaki Ichigo and his friends!" She said as they continued to run. Soi-Fon placed her hand out towards Naruto and took careful aim, her index and middle finger pointed at him. This move should be low-level enough to slow him down without much fanfare so she could end his life, "Bakudou #1: Sai (Way of Binding #1: Restrain)!"

Naruto felt a pull and then felt his arms lock behind his back. The way Naruto ran, from his time as a shinobi, was leaning far forward for speed with arms straight back behind him as a counter-balance. Now those same arms were bent and pinned to his back, throwing off his forward balance quite spectacularly due to the speed he was already travelling at. Thus when Naruto slipped before reaching the edge of one roof and flying forward to smack into the side of another, he had no way to really stop his forward momentum or brace his face due to his arms stuck behind his back.

Naruto fell down into an alley and bounced off of a dumpster top hard before falling to the ground, groaning at not expecting that kind of thing from Soi-Fon so brazenly. He stood back up without the use of his arms, "You do know that this isn't going to keep me here at all don't you?" He then ducked a kick intended for his head and jumped away.

"It'll keep you here long enough to kill you." Soi-Fon said before attempting to stab him only for Naruto to dodge her every move with an expressionless face. Eventually he smirked as one of his hands flew from his back and grabbed the arm that had Suzumebachi attached to it, "What?"

"Wow." Naruto said, holding back the blade arm with relative ease, "You really aren't at full power are you? If I had done that in the Seireitei I probably would have lost that hand."

"You broke my Kidou." She said.

Naruto shrugged, "I break a lot of things. You say that like it was hard to do. I broke one stronger than that before from Yamamoto-jiji and you aren't even at full power." He then lifted her off of the ground with one hand as he held their arm above his and her heads and grinned at her due to the close proximity, "Don't tell me you're jealous of me and Yoruichi-chan Jooubachi. You know I love you too." Soi-Fon growled and swung her leg low to kick him in the junk, only for it to be narrowly blocked by his other forearm. Naruto gave her a dry look with a twitching eye, "I really wish you wouldn't do stuff like that. Yoruichi-chan likes that part of me and I'm rather fond of it too." He then dropped her when she punched him in the face, "Gah! So angry!"

"You're damn right I'm angry! You sullied Yoruichi-sama!" Naruto held his nose that he felt was about to bleed while dodging Soi-Fon's strikes with her Zanpakutou and keeping her at bay with kicks that missed, but kept the smaller woman out of range of hitting his butterfly mark. He did this until he got another cut on his leg that formed another butterfly mark. One was bad news, two was stepping into the territory of odds he didn't want to test.

"Technically we sullied each other." Naruto said, still holding his nose before deciding he had allowed Soi-Fon to vent enough, "Fuck this. I'm not going out like this. Later Jooubachi, I'll see you when you calm down at home." He said before backflipping out of the way of another slash onto a wall. Soi-Fon jumped after him, but Naruto jumped higher and bounced off of wall after wall until he finally reached the rooftop, "Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu)! Have fun picking the real me out of the lineup!" He said as Soi-Fon reached the roof and watched dozens of him scatter from the large puff of smoke.

"Damn it!" She said before picking the direction more than a few went off into, hoping she had selected correctly. They were totally indistinguishable from the original. They all even had the same amount of energy in them it seemed.

After a few seconds, a sigh of relief sounded out and Naruto appeared, laying down on the roof with a camouflage sheet over his body, "You're cute, fast, and violent my lovely Jooubachi, but I'm the greatest ninja that has ever lived. I do stuff that people forgot about." The butterfly marks on him vanished and he let out a pleased laugh, "And she's quit because she knows she can't catch me anymore."

He resealed the sheet in a scroll and jumped down the roof back into the alley, whistling his usual jaunty tune as he walked out of the alley and through the streets, although he wasn't aware of a pair of eyes that had been able to see what had happened in the alley across the street.

XxX

(Moments Ago)

Arisawa Tatsuki wasn't particularly in the best mood. Her best friend Orihime had been gone for over a month and a half to who knows where, and when she finally came back she wasn't exactly forthcoming with where she had been. Saying she had been visiting a relative that lived elsewhere, but not really being able to say what she had been doing while she was gone.

Orihime was smiling brightly and chattering away about how she was so happy to see her cousin and Tatsuki had almost had enough, about to call her friend on her 'alibi' of where she had been for the entire summer, school started next week. Before she could say anything, across the street in an alleyway, there was a crash that grabbed her attention.

"What was that?" Tatsuki asked, planning to go over and see what was wrong, "Should we go see? Maybe someone's in trouble."

Orihime nodded and they both walked over only to find a blonde guy dodging attacks from a woman with a small blade in her hand while holding his nose, 'Naruto? And is that one of those captains from the Soul Society?'

Tatsuki watched the scene in confusion, "I don't understand. Is she being mugged by that guy or is it the other way around, I can't tell." Her eyes then widened when the blonde guy jumped off of the walls comprising the alley, and seamlessly made his way to the roof, "Whoa! How the hell did he do that? That looked like that stuff on TV, parkour... it was actually pretty cool." She then noticed something else when she remembered the specific marks on his face, "Wait, was that the guy that showed up for one day during the last week of school?"

Now Orihime wasn't aware of exactly what Naruto wanted people to know about him, but she did know that Tatsuki wasn't supposed to know about Naruto's powers or especially about Shinigami, "I don't know, I didn't really see them that well! It was dark!" She answered rather frantically, getting Tatsuki to look at her with suspicion, "It doesn't matter now, he's gone!"

Tatsuki frowned but conceded the point to her friend. Even if she could get up there he was probably long gone. Giving the rooftop one last look, she shrugged and turned, with Orihime following her, 'So weird…' She thought as they walked away, Orihime chattering brightly again, telling her about her 'vacation', but actually not saying anything. She stopped when they both heard the echo of a bright whistle from the alley.

Ducking behind the end of the corner, they both watched Naruto walk out of the alley with a rather pleased look on his face and turn away from their direction as he began walking, "While I'm out here I might as well take care of some business." They heard him say to himself as he kept walking, pulling out a cell phone, "You guys need to learn how to pick up your damn phone I swear… Look I'm coming over… and you guys are obviously not going to get this so I'm wasting my time." He said, turning around his own corner to disappear from sight.

"That _is_ the guy!" Tatsuki said, "I'd never forget a face like that. Who else would ever have whisker-marks on their face?"

"I don't know." Naruto said from behind both Orihime and Tatsuki, "Maybe if I ever had any kids it would be a sign of my lineage?" He grinned when they both turned around abruptly, but frowned when he found that he had to block a punch from Tatsuki due to her surprise. He let go of her hand and shook out the one he used to block, "Damn, unnecessary." His thought had something else entirely behind them, 'Holy crap, this chick has more chakra than I've felt from anyone in years!'

Now when he said chakra he meant both physical and spiritual energy combined. If things were based with him on pure spiritual energy, Ichigo would have the most by far, Orihime's actually dwarfed Tatsuki's as well. But she must have trained hard or something, or had some kind of latent descent from someone with a good amount. He couldn't even feel most people honestly. Over time most energy had become purely physical and people only had enough chakra to survive. Something about this girl brought her spiritual energy up enough for him to say she had a good amount of chakra.

Tatsuki pulled her fist back, surprised that someone actually blocked an attack from her. He didn't even look like it had even registered with him that he had been attacked despite the fact that he was kind of staring, "Who the hell are you, and why were you sneaking up on us?"

"Why were you two stalking me?" He fired back with an amused smirk on his face, "And I'm Uzumaki Naruto, what's your name pretty, violent girl?" He leaned back out of the way of a kick, "That didn't really prove my name for you wrong."

"Tatsuki-chan please don't try to hurt Naruto. He's not a bad person." Orihime pleaded, trying to keep Tatsuki from pushing Naruto to do something mean to put her down.

Tatsuki stopped at her friend's behest and turned to her, "Orihime how do you know this guy? We didn't even talk to him in school that day."

"Um…" Orihime thought hard for an answer before something hit her and she spoke, "This is my cousin! Naruto!"

Naruto raised an eyebrow and Tatsuki didn't seem convinced, "This is your cousin? He sure doesn't seem to be anything like you." She said before turning to Naruto who seemed to be staring off in space with his mouth open, "Oi! What are you looking at like that?"

Naruto noticed that Tatsuki was talking to him and zoned back into focus, "Oh sorry. I was just thinking. I made waffles for breakfast today and I was thinking of a kickass new topping. Maybe ramen noodles?" He snapped his fingers, "Hell yeah! I'm seriously going to try that later! I wonder what ramen topping would go best with waffles." Tatsuki almost turned green just thinking about it

"Ooh that sounds good!" Orihime chimed in, "I'll see for myself what that tastes like, do you want me to make you some Naruto?"

Tatsuki looked between the two and sighed, "Okay, I can see the resemblance now…" She then gave a suspicious look at Naruto, "Wait, if you're Orihime's cousin why didn't you talk to her or do anything with her while you were at school?"

Naruto shrugged, "Because she has her own friends and her own thing going for her in school. I don't want Orihime's friends to talk to me just because they think they have to because of her. And I'm not going to intrude on her life like that. I'm better than that." He lied seamlessly. He wouldn't even have been there if he hadn't had to be.

Tatsuki still wasn't convinced, "And why did you only go for that one day? I didn't see you again for the rest of the term. And why didn't you stay with Orihime?"

"Naruto has his own place!" Orihime cut in suddenly, trying to bail Naruto out, "And he was only there that day to see the school that he'd be going to in the fall, right Naruto?" She said with a rather desperate sounding tone of voice, eyes so wide and almost pleading him to say yes he could hardly stand it.

'Fuck school!' Naruto thought to himself before grinning at Orihime, "Yep. You've got it sweetheart."

Tatsuki took all of this in and smirked, thinking she finally had a way to either expose one thing or the other, "So Naruto… Orihime's cousin… Where did she go for summer vacation? Did she do anything fun?"

Orihime's smile became incredibly strained as Tatsuki caught both of their lies right then and there. But Naruto just sighed and rubbed his temple, "She's so sweet. She probably told you she had a great time, but I know she was so bored the entire time… poor girl." He smiled sadly, "I took her with me on a trip to Kyoto so that I could finish up business before I moved here to help her out. Both of us live alone, but I have means to support myself, and I wanted to help her out without her having to rely on our other relatives." He walked over and pulled Orihime towards him in a half hug, "I'm not living with her though… I don't want to cramp her style."

Tatsuki frowned at him, "Well why not? I'm glad you're here to help her, but I think it would be better if Orihime lived with some family. You don't seem like a bad guy… I think."

Orihime shook her head, "No, Naruto's a good person!"

"So why not live with him?" Tatsuki wondered out loud, "You two seem like you'd get along. Where do you even live Naruto?"

Naruto blinked, "Old industrial district." Orihime and Tatsuki looked at him strangely, "What? Property is super cheap over there and the place didn't need much work. My place is awesome." That was a lie. For him it wasn't much work. For anyone else it would have taken forever.

Tatsuki nodded. It was a strange place for someone to live for sure, but from the way Naruto dressed there was hardly anything wrong with him that she could see, "So you said you can support yourself and Orihime, and you said you own a great place. What do you actually do?"

"Publishing company." Naruto said right off the top of his head without really thinking, actually impressing himself with that one, 'Where the hell did that come from? Holy shit that's a great idea! Skip dealing with the middleman every few years for a new copy of the books, I can do it my damn self, and that can be my cover like Urahara's Shop. Sweet!' He grinned, pleased with his lie that would soon be a reality, "Yep, I run a publishing company that I managed to get ahold of. Moved it to Karakura Town." That wasn't too far out of left field was it? Kids owned things and had tons of money all the time.

Tatsuki's eyes widened, as did Orihime's but she schooled her expression rather quickly. Damn this was an elaborate lie, good thing Naruto had taken the ball Orihime had given him at the start and ran with it. Tatsuki was actually pretty amazed at that, "Wow, you're no older than us, that's really impressive. So what's it called?"

"Konoha Publishing." He again said without missing a beat, 'Damn I'm good! I haven't lied like this in forever!' He continued speaking, "Yeah, we're pretty obscure, but we'll be making our money in no time. We've got a major title about to come out that'll put us on the map."

"Wow Naruto!" Orihime said, getting caught up in Naruto's lie herself, "I've got to come by and see it sometime, it sounds great!" She then froze as she realized what she said, and the look of horror on Naruto's face told her that he felt exactly the same that she did.

A shrug came from Tatsuki, "That actually sounds cool to me. So when can we stop by and see the place? What's the address?"

"Um…" Naruto said blankly as his brain tried to come up with a way out of his situation. He stupidly held up three fingers, "The address is 735 Murasaki Rd. I'm going to be busy for a while, so three days?"

"Sounds good." Tatsuki said, grabbing Orihime's arm, "You can talk to your cousin anytime you want Orihime, I have to go home and get some things. Nice meeting you Naruto." She said as she walked away. Orihime waved to him with an apologetic look on her face as she followed.

Naruto waved back at her, giving her a confident grin that told her everything was going to be okay before he decided to go on his way, "That girl could see me and Soi-Fon… and that punch of hers was the strongest thing I've felt any normal person throw at me in a while." He went into thought, "I wonder if it would be too late for her… it's worth a try to see if she could. I'll try it when she comes over with Orihime in a few days."

XxX

(Naruto's Squad's Home Base – Basement Training Ground)

Soi-Fon walked through the entire building with Yoruichi after returning from her failed chase of Naruto, apparently in the world of the living his ability to hide his Reiryoku signature was far greater than she had expected it to be. After destroying the clones she chased down she was unable to get a lock on him again, so she simply returned. He would be back eventually, "Yoruichi-sama I don't see how you could possibly have allowed that man to do such things with your consent!"

At first Yoruichi had been amused by Soi-Fon's disdain at finding out about the night she had with Naruto, but it was getting to be somewhat troublesome now, "Well I did, he had it, and no you won't be doing anything to his reproductive organs like you've so descriptively threatened so calm down. You're acting like Naruto is pure evil or something. He's the best person you've met in years and you know it. You actually liked him until you found this out."

"Yes but-." Soi-Fon tried to dispute before Yoruichi cut her off.

"But nothing. That should be it. I'm an adult, not a child." Yoruichi said with finality as she stretched her arms out while walking to the area where Hidan would be waiting to train, "You're acting silly." A smirk then came to her face, "Unless of course you were angry at him for a more personal reason… I don't remember you ever having a boyfriend so I guess that could be it. You're mad at him for not letting you-."

"Yoruichi-sama!" Soi-Fon said with a red face. One hundred years and she could still let herself be teased by the woman. Honestly she was almost as bad as Uzumaki was.

Yoruichi laughed slightly before finding Hidan in his Gigai laying down in the middle of some strange circle looking like he was dead, "Hidan what are you doing?"

Hidan's eyes popped open and he sat up like a corpse before he explained, "I can't kill you in this fight so I was just praying to Jashin-sama for forgiveness. That was my ritual of doing so." He then noticed Soi-Fon with her, "Um, is it alright that she's here for this? From what I've been told she's going to cause a fuss over this."

Yoruichi nodded, "Go ahead. If she panics without listening to reason first I'll handle her. Don't worry about it."

Hidan shrugged as he grabbed the cylinder housing his retractable pike to reveal a skull like the one on the bottom of Urahara's cane and pressed it to his chest before looking at Yoruichi once more getting a motion from her saying to get on with it.

Hidan slammed the cylinder roughly into his chest and the room was instantly filled with a thick Reiatsu that Soi-Fon had to take a moment to adjust to. She felt the presence of a Hollow but only saw Hidan who stood there in a black cloak with red clouds, open down to his chest to reveal what looked to be bone in the form of some necklace attached to his body. He looked exactly the same except with a rather large, wicked looking scythe in hand, his Gigai at his feet, "Yep, that's me."

Soi-Fon's hand went to her Zanpakutou before she remembered what Yoruichi said, "W-What is he? He feels like a Hollow but doesn't look like one." He didn't look any different at all except for the aforementioned things, "And why is his spiritual energy so powerful? A Hollow this strong shouldn't be able to exist without being noticed."

Yoruichi walked over to Hidan and poked at his Gigai with her foot, "That's what the Gigai that hides his energy is for. This is an Arrancar, and Aizen's growing army is full of them. Hidan was a Vasto Lorde before becoming an Arrancar. Blame Naruto for that." She finished with a frown.

"Hey I like being a Hollow, or an Arrancar, or whatever I am this week." Hidan said, slightly offended at the way she referred to being a Hollow as a bad thing. He then saw Soi-Fon go for her Zanpakutou, "Oi, no trying to kill the help! I work for Uzumaki and I have diplomatic immunity so suck it!"

Yoruichi held Soi-Fon's arm from trying to go for her blade, "He's telling the truth. One of Naruto's perks was that he could pick his team and they only answered directly to him and whoever else he directed to be under him. I guess it's his way of trying to protect anyone he deems to be his comrade… it's admirable actually." She said with a smile.

Soi-Fon looked at her mistress, smiling as if she had a crush while talking about Naruto's deal set up with the Gotei 13 but tried ignoring it to keep asking questions, "So I can't attack him even though he's a Hollow?"

Yoruichi thought about it for a moment, "Well you could, but Naruto wouldn't be very happy about it at all. Besides, Naruto assured me about a million times already when I was concerned about it that if Hidan went off the handle he could stop him."

"Yes, yes. She has the rules or engagement in her head now." Hidan snapped, tapping his foot impatiently, "Now can we train already? Which one of you am I fighting? You're both looking like you want a piece of me, especially the Shinigami captain-girl."

Yoruichi smirked at him and used Shunpo to get far away from Hidan's Gigai so it wouldn't be destroyed during the fight, "Show me what you've got Hidan."

"Gladly." Hidan said before disappearing with a low booming noise signifying his movement. Yoruichi was surprised that he had picked up on his speed technique so fast, but was prepared for him, dodging a swing of his scythe with a back handspring.

"How did you do that?" Yoruichi asked him, "You got a speed technique down that recreates Shunpo. It's only been one day."

Hidan smirked at her, "Another of those moves I gleamed from those three Arrancar women that took me to that Aizen chump. They explained all of their moves to me, and I listened. That was Sonido (Sound Ceremony). And I got it quickly because I'm not exactly slow in my Gigai, when I was alive I was used to moving pretty fast."

Soi-Fon seemed rather impressed, "So it looks like Uzumaki didn't get someone useless after all. Still, how can we trust him as a Hollow, or Arrancar?"

Yoruichi set herself in a ready stance to prepare to fight Hidan, "Naruto trusts him enough to have him on the team and Hidan's done very well so far. There's no real reason besides his cosmetic appearance to think we can't trust him. Now begin."

Hidan rushed towards Yoruichi, swinging his scythe in a manic fashion from every angle, but she remained just out of his reach as she analyzed his attack pattern or the lack thereof, 'He knows how to use this weapon that's for sure. He's precise and surgical with how he swings this thing, but he doesn't seem to hold anything back during his attack, as if he doesn't know how to shift from attacking to defending.' She thought as she stayed out of his range, 'As if he doesn't care that he could take damage like this… though with the style he told us he had during his time alive I'm not surprised.'

Suddenly, Hidan let go of his scythe and let it slip out of his hand to fly at Yoruichi. Her eyes widened when he swung it at her, holding onto it by the cable attached to the weapon under his robe. She jumped back far and decided it was time to really start seeing what he was made of.

Yoruichi dashed towards Hidan and threw a hard kick that he lifted the pole of his scythe to block with, however the force of her kick sent him sliding backwards into a boulder, cracking it with his body.

"Okay that was actually really good." Hidan said as he walked towards her again, "But you're going to have to kick a little bit harder if you really want to hurt me." He said with a grin as he placed his scythe on his back, "New move time!"

"Another one?" Yoruichi asked him with her hands on her hips, "How are you getting these so fast?"

"Ask Uzumaki-brat. We were ninja in our time. We're used to feeling and manipulating the energy inside of us. This Hollow stuff is so fucking basic, it's pretty much instinctual." Hidan said, cocking a fist back despite the fact that he was nowhere near Yoruichi. His fist began to glow red with a slight amount of swirling energy, "Bala (Hollow Bullet)!"

He threw his punch at Yoruichi and from his fist flew a blast of energy that came at Yoruichi so fast her eyes widened before it exploded, making contact with her.

Soi-Fon gasped, "Yoruichi-sama!" She then turned towards Hidan who was looking at his fist as if he were trying to examine it, 'That was like a Cero except far faster and unconcentrated. What kinds of other powers do these Arrancar have?'

"Man…" Hidan complained, looking at his hand, "That was kind of cool, but the Cero is so much cooler. Way bigger bang for my buck." He looked at the smoke provided from his attack hitting Yoruichi, "You alive in there?"

The smoke cleared to reveal Yoruichi standing there with her hands up, arms fully extended to block his attack. Her palms were slightly singed but other than that she was unharmed. She actually had a rather serene look on her face, "That was pretty okay… no real kick behind it though. You must really not know exactly how to use that attack." She said, getting a tick mark to form on Hidan's head, "Let's see what else you can do baby-Arrancar. I won't be standing still this time either."

"Heh." Hidan chuckled cruelly as he pulled his scythe from his back, "Bring it on bi-." Yoruichi disappeared from her spot and before Hidan could fully turn, he found himself kicked hard and sent flying past Soi-Fon who moved out of the way to avoid his body.

Soi-Fon looked down at Hidan as Yoruichi walked over next to her and did the same. The dark-skinned female looked down at Hidan who had a look of a deer in the headlights on his face, "Don't get cocky. You're good but you're not used to your body, and you don't have whatever powers you have as a shinobi in that form. Only in your Gigai. That's why Naruto could threaten to kill you if you started doing evil things." Hidan's Gigai could not be killed, much like his original human body, but his soul could. Naruto could just pull Hidan's soul out and kill him while he was in Arrancar form since he could die in that form.

Getting up off of the ground, Hidan dusted his cloak off and growled at Yoruichi before Soi-Fon cut in, "You have raw power, tons of it. But from what I can see you attack arrogantly with no actual battle plan except to deal out damage of any kind." He turned to Soi-Fon who had her arms crossed as she explained what she had gleamed from what had gone down, "You fight nothing like Uzumaki. He's far more elusive than you are."

Hidan rolled his eyes at the comparison, "Uzumaki-brat and I are two different breeds of warrior. Uzumaki tries to overpower enemies, and when he can't he uses deception and rudimentary tactics to get an opening to finish with something big." Soi-Fon's eye twitched, having dealt with both spectrums of Naruto's combat style in the past, "On the other hand, I am a killing machine. No matter how long it takes, I will hit you and you will die. Simple as that."

"Not anymore." Yoruichi said, "You have actual skill with that scythe, you have powers you can use now. You will learn how to use them the right way or I'll make sure Naruto doesn't let you go back to Hueco Mundo. Our enemies are dangerous and powerful, and having you go in with a half-assed battle plan like that isn't going to work. Before you say that you'll fight in your human body so that you can't die, remember that a Hollow can pull your soul out of your Gigai."

Hidan narrowed his eyes at her, "And how exactly are you going to _make sure_ of anything?"

Yoruichi smirked cruelly, "I'm not just a pretty face Hidan… I'm stronger than you, for more than one reason. And I can convince Naruto to keep you back here because he trusts my judgment. I could just make him fight you himself so he could give his own opinion." She looked over at Soi-Fon, "How would you like to help me work this idiot into fighting shape. He's going to need the experience."

Hidan looked between them as he saw Soi-Fon finally draw her Zanpakutou, "I'm starting to see what Uzumaki meant about strong women in his life…" He said before slapping himself hard, preparing for a long, long day, "Fine then! Bring it on!" All three disappeared with their respective speed techniques.

XxX

(Outside of the Visoreds Hideout)

Naruto stood out front of the warehouse banging on the door belligerently, "Open the goddamn door you jerks! I will blow this door down in three seconds!" He said, forming a Rasengan in his right hand, "Three! Two! On-!" The door suddenly flew open and a sandal landed smack against his face.

"Shut up you idiot!" Hiyori yelled at him as the sandal slid down his face, Naruto had a deadpan expression on his face, "Don't you know how to call before you come over or are you too stupid to use a phone now?"

Naruto growled and stomped over to her, grabbing her by the back collar of her track suit and lifting her off of the ground, "Do _you_ know how to answer a phone, or better yet check a fucking answering machine? Don't pop that shit to me, I am not in the mood today little lady." He held up her sandal and placed it back on her foot, "Next time I'll make you eat this thing." He said as he walked inside, still holding onto her, keeping her at arm's length.

"Let go of me asshole!" Hiyori yelled at him, trying to get him to drop her by punching and kicking at him but was unable to reach him.

"No, I don't feel like having three people that are way shorter than me try to beat me up in the same day." Naruto replied, not letting her go, "Besides still being violent, did you miss me while I've been gone?" He asked as he finally dropped her in a chair in the warehouse, getting the attention of everyone else inside.

"Hell no!" Hiyori snapped at him, "Why are you even here?"

Naruto answered bluntly, "I got chased out of my house and decided to kill two birds with one stone and come see you guys."

Hiyori huffed but then smirked at him, "Kick any Shinigami ass?"

Naruto grinned at her, "I kicked so much ass. Turned the place upside down." He looked at the rest of the Visoreds, "Join the squad damn it! I want your help, and I know you want to take a swing at Aizen!"

Shinji walked over with his usual sardonic look on his face, "You already know the terms Naruto. Get Ichigo to us so we can teach him how to use his powers and we might think about it."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Naruto mumbled, "Those are the terms for _you_. Not everyone else. Besides, school starts next week. If I just run up on the kid and find his house that would just scare the hell out of him and make him distrust me. Wait." He dug into his ear and flicked what he got from it at Shinji, getting the man to scowl at him, "I think he kind of trusts me from all of the Seireitei stuff, but not by much."

"So how long?" Kensei asked from his area of the warehouse, doing curls with a dumbbell, "Are we talking weeks or months to get him to show up here?"

Naruto shrugged, "I don't know. Time's irrelevant for me remember, I'm immortal." He felt someone tackle him from behind and hold onto him around the neck, "Hey, how you doing?"

Mashiro was hanging off of Naruto's back, "Did you miss me Fishcake?"

Naruto chuckled, "Almost getting killed kind of takes up your space for wandering thought in your head." He looked over at Hiyori and gestured to the woman with lime-green hair on his back, "You see, why can't you be as nice as her? She never hits me… um, unless we're already sparring, but that doesn't count."

Hiyori rolled her eyes, "Because you're both two halves of the same idiot." Both Naruto and Mashiro stuck their tongues out at her, "There's my point exactly."

Naruto let Mashiro down, "Yeah whatever grumpy." He said as he walked towards the center of the room, "So do you guys just want to stay here in this warehouse doing nothing until the end of days, or do any of you lazy bastards want an actual job?"

Love, Rose, and Lisa looked up from reading their mangas and looked at Naruto strangely, "Now by 'actual job' what do you mean exactly?" Lisa asked him.

Naruto rubbed his chin, "Well honestly, you'd still be doing next to nothing, but it's more of a cover. Something like Urahara's little shop only what I do is actually going to make me some money." He quipped, "Does anyone actually buy stuff from that place?" Everyone shrugged in confusion, "It doesn't matter. Talk to me in a bit when I get everything set up. This is going to be the best idea I've had in years."

XxX

(Three Days Later – Naruto's Base)

Naruto sat on the roof of the building in a state of meditation alongside Yoruichi… who had Soi-Fon with her, as she wouldn't let Naruto alone with Yoruichi again as long as she had the option. Yoruichi in her cat form looked at Naruto in amusement, "Only you could get yourself into a situation like this."

"What would you know about it?" He replied with a smirk on his face, "I was lying my ass off until Orihime got caught up in the awesome of my lie. Sweet girl, like her a lot… screwed us both over though." He cracked open an eye to look out on the very empty street of the basically abandoned district of town, "Oh well, maybe I can use this." He looked over at Soi-Fon, "When are you wanting to go check out Hueco Mundo?" He asked as he shut his eyes again.

"What can you tell me about it?" Soi-Fon answered, trying to keep her own meditation going as she sat in her Gigai, "I was dispatched with the understanding that you and Yoruichi-sama had already been there yourselves."

Naruto frowned, "We weren't there for long before things kind of hit the fan. There was one Arrancar that was so strong. That Tia Harribel girl… and Aizen's supposed to have an army's worth of them."

Soi-Fon turned and looked at Naruto who seemed to have a serious look on his face as he thought about it, "But Hidan is an Arrancar too. A strong one from what I've seen."

"He's not used to his powers yet." Yoruichi said, "He is strong, and he'll get stronger when he gets his body mechanics worked out, but for now he's not good enough to deal with that woman we saw."

"About Hueco Mundo itself…" Naruto said, trying to explain what he saw to Soi-Fon, "Under the surface is a forest of trees made of minerals. That's where a lot of Hollows live, but we didn't fight any that could potentially beat us. There were tons in hiding though, Yoruichi could feel them and even see tons of them when we fell in."

Yoruichi picked up where Naruto left off, "There was nothing on the surface that we could see from the little amount of travel we did there. It was just a white desert, no life whatsoever." The woman in black cat form let out a yawn and hopped onto Soi-Fon's shoulder where she curled up, "If there's exploration to be done in Hueco Mundo that's where I would check next."

"I'm going." Naruto said with finality, "There's still so much about all of this I don't understand. Maybe if I go I can get some answers…"

Soi-Fon nodded, Naruto would be useful for something like this. He had been there more than any of them and he was no slouch in a fight to say the very least, "Well then I'll prepare a plan of action to take within a day or two. Omaeda and Kurotsuchi-fukutaicho should come with us."

Yoruichi jumped down from Soi-Fon's shoulder, "I'll stay here and help Hidan get up to speed with his powers. Maybe I'll call Kisuke for help, he's supposed to be on this team too."

"Good." Naruto said before his eyes opened up and he stood, "In the meantime, it's time to put on a show if you know what I mean…"

"What are you going to do?" Yoruichi asked Naruto as she saw how relaxed about this whole thing he was. He was close to being discovered and he didn't seem to care.

Naruto pointed down the street in the direction he could feel Tatsuki and Orihime coming towards, "What do you think? Try to sense out the person that's with Orihime, go ahead." He saw Yoruichi's eyes widen as she opened her mouth to speak, "No she doesn't have any powers because her abilities physically overshadow her abilities spiritually, like Chad, but only times ten since his spiritual energy is way higher than hers."

"So…" Yoruichi said in a testing manner.

"So…" Naruto said, mimicking the cat before continuing on, "That means she's mine."

Soi-Fon's eyes shot open as she turned to Naruto in shock, "That is incredibly irresponsible Uzumaki! What are you thinking?"

Naruto didn't rise to a spirited defense, choosing to calmly explain himself instead, "She saw us with our little lover's spat in town. Luckily she didn't dwell on it for too long. She has enough spiritual awareness about her to do that, and that makes her a target the way the others were. She already mistrusts Orihime's summer vacation, so why keep a bad lie for no good reason?"

"She can't fight the way Kurosaki's other friends can." Soi-Fon said as if she was speaking to a child.

Naruto smirked like a man with a plan, "Not _yet_. Give me a few months with her and we'll see how that tune of yours changes." With that he started walking to the stairs on the roof to head inside, "I have to get her to believe me and see if she actually wants to give it a shot first."

Yoruichi teased him as he disappeared down the stairs, "You're playing with fire Naruto~." She said in a sing-song voice.

"Haven't been burned yet beautiful." He said before heading inside for good.

XxX

After walking through the rather uninspiring section of town that Naruto's office lay in, Orihime was getting kind of nervous. She hadn't known Naruto for that long, but he seemed to be a wily guy. A nice guy, one of the genuinely brightest guys she had met by far, but still the craftiest person she had ever met except for maybe Urahara Kisuke. If he hadn't come up with a good excuse as to why it wouldn't be a good idea to come to his 'office' then it had to be okay to keep up with the story of him being her cousin.

She had to admit, she just blurted that out, but he just ran with it flawlessly thus far. It was actually very impressive.

And then she and Tatsuki came to his office and stopped out front and looked at the place. A rather large place, six stories, a rather burnt orange looking building, with the front having a one-way glass wall that they couldn't see through, but it seemed on the level. The only thing was a distinct lack of a sign out front to let anyone know where they were.

"Well…" Tatsuki said, looking the area over, "This is the place. He said that his place was awesome and it doesn't look bad so far. Though living out of his office seems kind of weird." She said, looking over to the orange haired girl with her.

Orihime instantly snapped out of her state of awe that this might actually end well and rubbed the back of her neck sheepishly, "Yeah, well Naruto works hard all of the time, so I'm not very surprised that he stays here. He lives his work after all." She said, laughing nervously, "Come on, let's go in!"

The two headed inside to find a front room lobby of sorts. Many chairs, shiny, office-like floors. A fantastic view outside if there had been anything worth looking at out there, and doors to whatever was behind this lobby room. At the back wall of the room was a rather wide desk with three chairs behind it in certain spots, but for the moment there was only one person behind it. A woman with blue eyes and blonde hair in long pigtails on the side of her head sat in the middle behind the desk, wearing a tan button-up blouse and a black skirt. She smiled brightly and spoke to the two girls that had walked in, "Hello, is there any way I can help the two of you today?"

Tatsuki blinked and looked around, "Shouldn't there be more people in a place like this?"

The receptionist's smile dropped a little before she perked back up and answered, "Well we're still rather new to town you see. This is actually my first day working here. Is there anything you two would like?"

Orihime stepped in at that point, "Do you know where Uzumaki Naruto is? He kind of invited us here today."

The woman grinned in recognition, "Oh he said that someone would be by today asking for him specifically." She said as she got on a phone and dialed a few numbers, "Yes boss, there are a few young women here for you. I'll tell them to sit tight for a moment." She hung the phone up and addressed Orihime and Tatsuki, "Boss will be with you in just a moment."

After a moment, Naruto came from the back wearing clothes more casual than yesterday. A dark blue shirt with an elaborate picture of a coastal storm on it, and jeans, "Hey you guys, what's going on?" He said with a toothy grin.

"This is really your place?" Orihime asked, rather wide-eyed as they went into the back and he began to lead them around. Naruto had made a bunch of clones and Henged them to go around looking like they were fixing the place up. They were, but it was more for aesthetic realism than anything else at the moment. Even the receptionist at the front was a Kage Bunshin under his Oiroke no Jutsu.

"Yep." He said proudly, "Before I came here right before summer started I won the place off of the old owner… the drunk." He noticed Tatsuki looking at him strangely, "What? I'm very good at poker and you get into some interesting stuff when you grow up without any family. Anyway, I renamed it, got some funding to turn the company around and moved them to Karakura so that I could help Orihime out and start working with a famous author that's looking to us to put his next book out." He was lying so hard at this point he thought some higher power would strike him down right on the spot.

Tatsuki raised an eyebrow, "And you're still in high school?"

Naruto nodded with a frown, "Waste of my time, but my vice-president is always like, 'No one's going to take you or the company seriously if you don't finish your education Naruto-.' Blah, blah, blah…" He said before shivering, "But if I don't go then something terrible will befall me. She's already threatened me with something I can't risk losing." And he couldn't. This was actually not a lie at all. Yoruichi wanted him to go to high school like Ichigo while she ran things during the daytime to maintain a cover. When he violently, loudly, and emphatically disputed she threatened to withhold sex from him until he did, and that was the end of that losing battle for him. What was three years anyway? He had all the time in the world.

At that moment, Hidan in his Gigai walked out of the kitchen eating a sandwich and stopped as he saw Naruto walking with the two girls, "Um… What's up?"

Naruto palmed his face and pointed at Hidan, "This is Hidan. Hidan works for me. He's my assistant."

Hidan scowled at being called an assistant, "Assistant my ass-crack Uzumaki. I don't do anything to make your life easier, if anything I make your life more complicated."

Naruto shook his head, still holding his face in his hands, "And the sad thing about it is, he's absolutely right. He's an old friend of mine that I gave a job to." He said as Hidan walked away, continuing to eat his sandwich.

"Orihime?" The girl in question turned around to see Yoruichi standing there, back in her human form, wearing casual clothes, "How are you?"

"Yoruichi?" Orihime said in surprise at seeing her again, here of all places, "What are you doing here?"

The female Shinigami winked at her before answering, "I'm Naruto's vice-president. He has a decent enough business plan but his execution leaves a lot to be desired in most cases. That's where I come in. Didn't he tell you during summer vacation about it?"

Naruto smiled at Yoruichi, "I'll tell you what, why don't you take Orihime and talk to her for a bit. I'm sure Tatsuki has some questions she wants to ask me herself, don't you?" Tatsuki looked at him in surprise but nodded. She planned on coming back later to do so, but since he was volunteering in the first place…

"Alright then!" Yoruichi chirped brightly, latching on to Orihime and dragging her away despite her protests to the contrary while Naruto and Tatsuki headed up to the roof. Once they were gone, Yoruichi let Orihime go, "Naruto has to talk to your friend about something important. Her ability to see spirits and what that means to her."

Orihime's eyes widened, "But I don't want Tatsuki-chan to be involved with any of this!"

Yoruichi shook her head, "You don't have much of a choice in the matter. The way you gained spiritual awareness also resulted in your friend getting it, it's just that you developed the powers that I could work with. She has powers that Naruto can work with instead. The way she is she'll be a more desirable target to Hollows, but won't be able to defend herself the way you can."

Orihime frowned, but nodded, "Tatsuki-chan will always try to defend me even if she isn't strong enough… at least Naruto might be able to help her if she accepts I guess." She then blinked after having a thought, "But what is he going to do? Tatsuki-chan never got any powers like me or Sado-kun."

Yoruichi shrugged, "I don't know, but he said that was actually better. He had something for her." Her mood shifted to one that was far brighter, "Anyway, this is our main base of operations! Would you like to find out more about what we're supposed to be doing here in the world of the living?" Orihime nodded as Yoruichi dragged her along again, "Well it's a long story so I might as well begin."

XxX

On the roof, Naruto leaned against a wall of the stairwell that led back down to the inside of the building as Tatsuki stood across from him staring at him intently, "You can say whatever you want you know. It's not going to offend me or anything if you're pissed or you don't like me."

Tatsuki shook her head, "It's not really that. I can usually read people and tell when they have bad intentions, but you don't. I just want to make sure that Orihime is safe. Her original parents were very abusive and excuse me if I'm kind of skeptical towards some random distant relative coming out of nowhere like you."

Naruto nodded, taking her words to heart, he couldn't sense any lie in her tone, "That's good. You just want to protect her, I like that." He sighed and leaned his head back to look up at the sky, "Orihime is one of the sweetest people I've ever met in my entire life. To have someone like you look out for her is actually great." He lowered his head and gave her a stern glance, "But do you know what there actually is to protect her from?"

Tatsuki took an involuntary step back at the change in tone from Naruto, "What are you talking about?" She kept stepping back as Naruto walked forward slowly.

"You can see spirits." He wasn't asking, he was stating it as a fact, "There are things that are about to go on soon. Another kid in your class, Kurosaki Ichigo, he's going to have a spot in it as well, but I'm going to wait to talk to him… he has a very hard head."

"Wait, Ichigo?" Tatsuki said, "How do you know Ichigo?"

"How much do you really want to know?" Naruto asked her in return, "If you don't want to know anymore or get involved I'll wipe your mind right here, right now and that will be that. It won't concern you. If you do decide to stick your nose further into it then you won't be able to back out. Someone like you probably wouldn't anyway."

Tatsuki narrowed her eyes on him, "All I know is that you just alluded to Ichigo and Orihime being in danger, and I made a promise to keep her safe… why are you telling me all of this?"

Naruto smirked and stopped moving towards her, starting to radiate ill intent, "Because you deserve to know. We know you've got the desire to protect her and him, now let's see if you've got what it takes to follow through with it." He said, alerting Tatsuki as she got into a fighting stance. Naruto held out one hand with his index finger up and out, "One finger… that's all I'm going to need. Prove me wrong."

Tatsuki bristled at what she thought was an insult, "Are you insane? I'm the second strongest girl in Japan. And all you're going to use is one finger?"

Naruto's smirk turned malicious, "You might be the second strongest woman in Japan, but I'm the strongest man in the entire world, ever, period." He crooked his single finger towards himself as if to say bring it on.

Tatsuki growled before running forward at Naruto and launching a punch intent on knocking his block off. Naruto simply lifted his hand and blocked the punch with his finger, raising an eyebrow in interest as she managed to force his hand back a little bit, 'That was good. Just how hard does this girl train?' He thought as he shoved her back with a flick to the forehead.

Tatsuki stumbled back halfway across the roof and rubbed the red mark on her head that formed from Naruto's flick, "What? How did you do that with one finger? That's insane!"

"Is that all you've got?" He said chidingly, "How could you even protect yourself with that kind of strength? And you want to help Orihime and Ichigo?" He laughed.

She ran back towards him and started trying to throw combination punches that Naruto blocked with just his finger, no matter what angle she tried coming at him from. She jumped in the air and dropped an axe kick that she was sure would get him when he just stepped back, letting her attack miss, "Hey! You moved!"

Naruto held back a laugh, "You expected me to stand still?" She growled and stood up, attempting a rising uppercut but missing when he leaned back just out of range. He placed his single finger on her forehead, getting her to freeze solid, "You have very good technique. I won't have to teach you hand-to-hand at least, you're fantastic at that. And I'm pretty sure if I let you, you could knock me through a wall, you're pretty damn strong." He moved his hand down to tilt her chin up to make eye contact with him, "Pretty cute too you little tomboy."

"Jerk!" She yelled, jumping back away from him, "I'm going to kick your ass for that!"

"So angry!" Naruto said in amusement, "And I would love to see you try!"

XxX

(10 Minutes Later)

Naruto stood with his foot on Tatsuki's back as she lay on the ground exhausted, "Not one time…" She said, panting heavily, "All those attacks, I never landed a single one and you didn't hit me once until the end." Naruto simply jabbed his single finger into Tatsuki's belly after having seen enough.

Naruto let his foot off of her, "Because you were ruled by your emotions for that fight. I pissed you off and you dropped most of your form. I was using your attack and flowing around it, it doesn't hurt that I'm way faster than you, but you seem to have some fighting experience. You're going to need that."

She sat up and looked up at Naruto, "Why?"

He kneeled down, looking her directly into the eyes as he put a hand on her head, "I want you to close your eyes for me." She looked skeptical, but did as he asked, "Just focus. Focus on building your energy and circulating it through your body. You know how to do that?" Tatsuki nodded and steadied her breathing to go with Naruto's request.

Naruto could feel the chakra going through her and smiled, 'Oh yeah, she's perfect for this.' "Tell me Tatsuki-chan, do you want to be left out of the loop? Do you really want to know what Orihime was doing this summer?"

Her eyes snapped open and she nodded, "I should have figured that was a lie after what you told me today."

Naruto chuckled as a gleam came to his eye, "Do you want to be my apprentice?" Her eyes widened, "You can use a specific kind of power inside of your body known as chakra whether you know it or not. And because you trained so hard and have had so much interaction with spirits before this, you have enough of it at your current age that you can develop your skill with it."

"What does it do?" Tatsuki wondered. Naruto made a cross hand-seal and in a puff of smoke, next to him appeared a perfect copy of him, "This can't be happening. I'm dreaming right?"

"You wish." Naruto said as his clone dispelled and he extended his hand towards her, "So do you want to be my apprentice? I'll tell you now it's not going to be easy, and you will hate me with a fiery burning passion because I need to get you up to snuff in a hurry, but from the amount of power you have I don't think it will take that long. You're already perfect at hand-to-hand combat and I don't even need to go over physical conditioning with you."

Tatsuki thought about it for a moment, "You say Orihime and Ichigo are already involved. Anyone else I know?"

"Yep." He said plainly.

"I'm in." She said with a frown, not really liking being left in the dark. She grabbed Naruto's hand and shook it firmly, "And when I see Ichigo again I'm going to kick him in the stomach for hiding this from me. I knew something was weird about him during the end of the last semester."

"Good!" Naruto said brightly, helping her to his feet, "Come back next week and we can start. In the meantime I want you to rest up and do everything fun that you want to do to your heart's content… because after we start you aren't going to want to do anything that exerts energy in your spare time for a long time."

Tatsuki gave him an owlish look when she noticed how serious his voice was, "Really?"

"I don't joke about training Tatsuki-chan." He said firmly, "You're going to hate me."

Her face turned to an excited smirk at the prospect of learning new ways of fighting from someone as strong as Naruto was, "The only way I'll end up hating you is if you waste my time, Naruto_-sensei_."

* * *

**Chapter done. Next chapter will be a recon mission from the Seireitei representatives and Naruto to go into Hueco Mundo for specific exploration, as well as other stuff that will be going down. Rargh!**

**Anyway, I'll catch you all later like always. Kenchi out peeps.**


	14. Sand in My Eyes

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. If awesome had a flavor, what flavor would it be? I like to think that it would be either almonds or beef jerky. That's just my personal opinion.

**Chapter 14: Sand in My Eyes**

* * *

It had been one day since Orihime and Tatsuki's planned visit to Naruto's base-in-construction and the orange-haired girl had returned the next day to visit her friend that she knew the least about only to find herself upon a curious scene.

Orihime blinked in confusion as she stood in the training room in the basement of Naruto's base, "You're going where? School starts Monday Naruto, are you saying you'll be back in four days?" She asked him, rather concerned that he wouldn't get back.

Naruto had a frown on his face as he stood in his sage coat and combat gear. With him was Soi-Fon, her lieutenant Omaeda, and Nemu, all of them prepared to go into Hueco Mundo with the blonde immortal, "We're going to Hueco Mundo. And if we don't get back in time…" A smirk came to his face, "Oh well… wouldn't that be a shame."

"Three days is your limit." Yoruichi said, getting him to groan negatively, "If you don't get back in three days I'm taking Hidan to open his own Garganta so we can look for you. We can't have you all staying in there to fight an actual battle. With just the four of you I don't like your odds for being in there for too long."

"What's the worst that can possibly happen?" Naruto questioned as he started stretching himself out in preparation, "Me and Jooubachi should be more than enough by ourselves to get through that place pretty easily. Just in case anything really goes down we have big man over here and Nemu-chan."

Nemu chimed in at that point, "Uzumaki-san I am simply to tag along as an observer. I am to record everything that I see, and if at all possible return with samples for Kurotsuchi-taichou."

Naruto frowned at the name of the mad-scientist that also doubled as her captain and her 'father', "Okay that's fine. I'm not expecting a fight anyway, but just be ready to defend yourself if you have to." He then looked at Omaeda and spoke to Soi-Fon, "Is he going to be worth a damn on this mission? Ichigo beat him with one punch in the Seireitei."

"Hey!" Omaeda barked in offense, "He just surprised me, that's all!"

Naruto smirked, "Aren't you Onmitsukidou? And you let some babyfaced brat get the drop on you?" The large man sputtered as Naruto pressed forward, "And my ass he got the drop on you. You had your Shikai out and he flattened you. He punched right through it. He beat you like a heavy-bag."

"Are we going to leave or what?" Soi-Fon asked impatiently, her foot tapping on the ground, "I want to see what all the fuss is about and what Hueco Mundo is all about. No Shinigami in the Gotei 13 has ever seen it and returned to tell the tale."

Naruto smirked as his Rinnegan blazed to life, "Ow." He said before he began to make hand-seals, "Anxious I see." Naruto slammed his right hand on the ground, "Gedou (Outer Path)! All aboard!" The ethereal demonic head rose from the ground, and those that hadn't seen it before didn't have long to gawk at it as four tongues shot out of its mouth and pulled Naruto, Soi-Fon, Omaeda, and Nemu inside before disappearing back into the ground.

Orihime stared at the place where the Gedou once sat, "W-Where did they go?"

"The world of the Hollows." Yoruichi answered glibly, "This is the third time he's used that thing, and the second time he's used it to go inside. Did you want to go?" She asked.

Orihime rapidly shook her hands in front of her face, "No! That's okay, I don't want to. I'd probably get in the way if I did…" She looked up when Yoruichi grabbed her chin and turned it up.

The dark-skinned woman was smiling at her, "You know, you shouldn't think of yourself that way. Naruto wanted to ask you if you wanted to join him on this team. He thinks you'd really be an asset."

"But I can't fight that well." She tried to reason in return. Why would Naruto want her to be on his squad? Even without seeing him fight firsthand she had to know that he was strong. He got respect in the Seireitei far too readily to be weak, "I don't know what good I would be."

Yoruichi frowned, "He doesn't think so and neither do I, but he said he knew that you didn't like fighting. He loves your healing ability though. He would ask you himself, but he doesn't think you'd join for no reason, even if he pays you well, which he would." She leaned back and puffed out her cheeks, "There's also the thing where he says that he doesn't think you trust him."

"I trust Naruto." Orihime said with a smile, "He helped Kurosaki-kun and all of us out in the Soul Society without any of us even asking him. He didn't even know us that well. I think we're friends." She looked around the spacious training room that reminded her of Urahara's place, "Does he really want me here?"

"Absolutely." Yoruichi said with full confidence, "But like I said, he didn't think you would be interested and he didn't want to force you or take advantage of your kind nature. In the end it's your choice and I'm telling you that I want you here and he all but invited you himself by letting you down here. Whatever you choose you should tell him yourself. I guarantee it would make his day if you did, you'd see."

Orihime then thought about something else, "But what about Kurosaki-kun and the others? Is he going to ask them?"

Yoruichi nodded, "He was, he just didn't know how he was going to go about doing that. None of them would trust him outright the way you seem to. That's one reason why I'm making him go to school actually." She patted Orihime on the top of her head, "Just think about it. He's going to teach your friend Tatsuki how to defend herself so she isn't a sitting duck against Hollows so there's another reason there." Orihime just nodded, planning on later talking to Tatsuki about just what Naruto told her yesterday.

XxX

(Hueco Mundo – White Desert)

Omeada dug himself out of a sand dune, sputtering and spitting out the grainy mineral, "Blah! Where the hell are we?" He looked to his side and saw Nemu there, sitting up out of the sand as well, "Where are taichou and Uzumaki?"

"Someone fat get in my way!" A distressed cry sounded out from above. Omaeda looked up only to be pounded into the ground by the body of a falling Naruto. Soi-Fon merely landed neatly on the surface of the sand and dusted herself off. Naruto stood up and glared at her, rubbing his head, "Why am I the only one that ever lands on their head when the Gedou spits them out?"

Nemu looked around and immediately began recording her surroundings, "The surface of Hueco Mundo seems to be a desolate wasteland devoid of any life whatsoever and apparently operates on an opposite lunar phase than that of the Seireitei or human world."

Soi-Fon looked around, rather unimpressed at what she was seeing so far, "So where are all of the Hollows? This _is_ Hueco Mundo isn't it?" Naruto pointed directly down signifying that the bulk of the Hollows were beneath the surface, "So then why aren't we down there?"

Naruto shook his head, "Because that's where they _all_ are. As in the bulk of the population. Yoruichi-chan couldn't even count them all when we were down there. We're not going down there. Aizen's not even there." He started walking as the others began to follow him, "We're going to be travelling up here, and we're going to be moving fast so we can cover some actual ground. If you can't keep up you picked the wrong guy to follow today." He started breaking out into a run, followed wordlessly by all of the others.

The group fell in line and began running after Naruto who kept an even pace without resorting to using any speed increasing techniques so that no one was left behind by any of the faster practitioners. The scenery began to drag after a while, with nothing really jumping out at any of them, just more desert, 'What's with this place?' He thought to himself as he continued to run, 'I keep feeling power in the air, but there's nothing around at all. If I really wind up spending three days here this is going to suck. My senses are wacked.'

Nemu was making her own conclusions, even recording things as she ran behind Naruto, 'The entire atmosphere is filled with Reiryoku in the form of Reishi. This must be how Hollows obtain the necessary nourishment to survive despite a lack of human souls to prey upon in this environment.'

Omaeda followed along behind him captain while looking around distastefully, 'I didn't expect much out of the place that Hollows are supposed to come from, but I expected _something_. This place sucks. I could see how someone like Aizen could hide here. There's _nothing_ anywhere!' He then looked forward at Naruto who seemed to be leading with a look of duty on his face, 'Why is Soi-Fon-taichou even following this guy? I've never seen her follow anyone's order except for Yamamoto-sotaichou.'

Seeing how Naruto wasn't even messing around this time about getting in and getting out with getting things done made Soi-Fon pay rapt attention to his face and how serious it seemed, something easy for her since she was right next to him, keeping pace, 'He said that the Arrancar that he confronted the first time he came here was strong. Were they that strong that he isn't even cracking a joke or trying to be silly?' "Uzumaki do you have a plan?"

"Do you?" He shot back in return, still keeping his eyes ahead, "What plan would there be except to scout the area? We're gaining basic knowledge, and all of us can handle anything that comes our way. If things get out of hand, I just need some time to summon the Gedou and we'll be right out of here in a flash."

Soi-Fon nodded and turned her attention back forward, "I want to see these enemies you told us about. I want to see for myself just what this army of Aizen's is capable of. Do you know of their skills?"

Naruto shook his head, "Everything we know about Hidan is basically what we know about them. I don't know if Tia Harribel is the weakest, the strongest, or where she ranks on the overall spectrum of power. Either way it's pretty bad news. If you were there you would have felt it too. An army of anything around that kind of power would be something to lose sleep over." A frown then crossed his face, "And from the way she spoke I think Aizen has the entire army wrapped around his thumb. How the hell did this guy manage to amass an army right under your noses? He wasn't even discovered until he chose to be."

"Don't ask Uzumaki…" Soi-Fon muttered to him in reply, "Captain Aizen was trusted. He was one of the leaders of the Gotei 13. For something like this to have happened he must have had this all planned out decades in advance at the very least. I'll make him pay, rest assured."

Naruto looked over at her stone serious face and gave her a smile, "One step at a time my sweet Jooubachi. We need to figure out what exactly we'll be walking into once things begin for real." He looked back at Nemu, "Nemu-chan sorry, but we haven't seen anything worth talking about so far."

Nemu simply looked at Naruto with her usual listless expression, "On the contrary Uzumaki-san. We have only been here for a few hours and already I have enough information that may interest Kurotsuchi-taichou once I return to the Seireitei."

Nodding wordlessly, Naruto asked another question, "Is anyone tired yet? Anyone need to stop and rest for a moment or are we still good to go?" He noticed Soi-Fon glaring at him, "What? I wasn't asking you. I know you're good for at the very least a few more hours, but your lieutenant might not be, and Nemu-chan might not be either."

Soi-Fon immediately asked him, "Omaeda are you tired?"

"Not even close taichou!" He answered immediately. It didn't matter if he was or not, not that he was. If he said he was tired at any point during the mission without having a damn good reason for it Soi-Fon would make him pay later. No weakness in the Onmitsukidou.

Soi-Fon nodded and turned to Nemu, "And you Kurotsuchi-fukutaichou?"

Nemu shook her head, "My body is modified to perform far greater than those of normal Shinigami. I do not feel any fatigue at the moment, I am fine. What about yourself Uzumaki-san, do you require any rest?"

Naruto snickered at the question, "I'm more of a machine than a human. As long as this is all we're doing, just running, I don't know how long I can keep this up for. Seriously, the only reason I ever stopped running during times like this in the past was because I had teammates that couldn't keep my pace. I'll be fine." The ground they ran on began to destabilize and lift up from the rest of the desert. "What the hell?"

"Get ready!" Soi-Fon ordered as everyone jumped back just as a massive Hollow emerged from the sand. It was the size of a Gillian-class Menos, but had a body comprised entirely of sand with a Hollow hole in the center of its chest, long arms, and a head resembling a sand castle.

Naruto flexed his fists in preparation of the fight, "He's huge! Let's get this big bastard out of the way and keep on going people!"

"What do you suppose we do Uzumaki?" Soi-Fon asked, preparing to draw her Zanpakutou as did her lieutenant. Nemu simply set herself in a ready hand-to-hand stance due to leaving her Zanpakutou behind.

Naruto cracked his fists, "You're talking like this will be hard. Compared to the Arrancar lady I met before this guy is just gum on my shoe." From one of the seals on the inside of his jacket, Naruto retrieved a fuuma shuriken that he launched at the sand Hollow, "Catch this big guy!"

The shuriken flew through the air and cut the Hollow's massive arm off, dropping it into the sand with a resounding thud. Omaeda looked at the severed appendage of the Hollow and raised an eyebrow, "That's it? Really? I thought that one of the Hollows ballsy enough to just jump out at us would have more fight in it than that."

"The battle isn't over yet Omaeda." Soi-Fon said, still ready to defend against an attack, "Uzumaki you're not that experienced at fighting Hollows! They have all kinds of powers and I think this one-!" Before she could finish, the arm that Naruto had severed easily regenerated as it swung the new limb back and swatted at them all, forcing them to jump out of the way, "Hollows regenerate! You need to hit them with something fatal to beat them, you're not going to finesse a Hollow!"

Naruto growled at her, "What was finesse about cutting the damn thing's arm off?" He returned his attention to the massive sand Hollow, "Fine, I'll blow this thing away!" He said before Soi-Fon dashed past him, "Oi, I said I'd do it!"

'This thing controls the sand we're standing on.' Soi-Fon surmised as she felt the Hollow try to disrupt where she was running by causing bursts of sand to fly up from the ground. Her eyes then widened when she saw a wave of sand ripple towards her. She grit her teeth and jumped over the wave at the Hollow before disappearing in a burst of her Shunpo. The massive sand Hollow was then cut in half by an invisible force and toppled to the ground with a crash.

Soi-Fon reappeared in front of Naruto and the other Shinigami, dusting grains of sand off of her captain's haori. Naruto gave her a deadpan look before starting a slow clap that he stopped after a few moments, "You get some aggression out of your system with that one?"

Soi-Fon scoffed, "As if Uzumaki. I was just showing you the proper way to exterminate a Hollow." The ground then started shaking, "What? I smashed it clean in half!"

Naruto growled as he watched the huge Hollow reform its entire body, "Okay… no more fucking around. I bet it'll stay down when I blow its entire body to kingdom come." He said as he ran back towards it, "Let's see you reform this time!"

The Hollow's jaw unhinged as it opened its mouth and began to inhale deeply. Naruto tried to dig his feet into the ground, but the loose grains of sand gave him next to no foothold and he began to be sucked towards the Hollow. Naruto formed a tiger seal and inhaled deeply, "Katon: Bouka Kabe (Fire Release: Fire Wall)!" Naruto fired off a towering rectangular wall of fire from his mouth that was sucked towards the massive Hollow and drawn inside of its mouth completely.

The massive Hollow groaned loudly after absorbing the fire attack and after a few moments froze solid as cracks faintly appeared on its surface. Pieces of sand chipped away to reveal parts of it had heated to glass by the raging fire Naruto had set in its belly.

"Omaeda, finish!" Soi-Fon ordered her lieutenant who leapt into action, using Shunpo to place himself above the Hollow's head.

"Buttsubuse, Gegetsuburi (Crush, Five-Formed Head)!" The large man's Zanpakutou formed into an oversized spiked ball attached to a long chain on his hilt. He swung the chain around over his head before launching the ball at the top of the Hollow's head, smashing the head and then the entire hardened body of the hollow as rough pieces.

The large Shinigami lieutenant laughed boisterously as he resealed his Zanpakutou and sheathed it, "And that's how you do it! Nobility wins the day once again, better blood, better skill!"

Naruto stared at Omaeda along with Soi-Fon who had learned to tune him out a long time ago. Unluckily, Naruto hadn't. He pointed at the man who gloated to Nemu, who couldn't care less as she tried to analyze the sand that the attacking Hollow had been comprised of, "If I kick him in the head will he shut up?"

Soi-Fon's lips quirked in amusement, "If it was that easy he'd have been shut up years ago. I can't beat it out of him so I deal with it."

Nemu had been kneeling around the pile of sand that had once been the Hollow when she called Naruto and Soi-Fon over to her, "There is something strange about this sand Soi-Fon-taichou, Uzumaki-san." Both of them walked over to her and she tried to explain, "I don't quite know how to place it, but the Hollow you just defeated was a conscious entity representing the desert."

Omaeda scratched his head as he tried to put two and two together, "So… we just killed the spirit of the desert?"

Nemu shook her head as she stood back up, "No. More like you just killed the guardian that was slated with defending the spirit of the desert. If it was the actual spirit of the desert then it would have attacked us the moment we arrived. We simply stumbled upon it, meaning that we were close to the desert spirit and the guardian reacted violently."

"So…" Naruto said, trying to get her to finish her thought and tell them what she was alluding to.

Nemu pointed down, "There's still something down there… and it's coming up to the surface now because we destroyed the guardian."

Soi-Fon sighed and prepared herself for another fight, "When you say it's coming to the surface, how long will it take to get here?"

The ground suddenly exploded and a blur shot into the air, raining sand down on top of everyone, keeping them from looking up lest they find themselves blinded by the sand, "Three seconds ago." Nemu said as a dense Reiatsu settled over them all.

"So this is an Arrancar?" Omaeda wondered as he had his hand on his Zanpakutou. The feeling felt slightly similar to Hidan as there was a specific feeling behind the Reiatsu, only instead of pure bloodlust that would send another person running for the hills, this feeling was one of apathetic detachment. It made you feel as if you didn't even want to fight in the first place, as if it was in your best interest to just leave and forget about being there.

Everyone opened their eyes as the sand stopped raining down and they saw a figure just standing at the top of a sand dune with his arms crossed. On his back sat a spear with a large blade that had four different points of varying size to make it to look something like a claw.

In the distance he stood at he looked shadowed so that his actual features couldn't be seen clearly. He finally began walking down the dune and towards the others, putting them on alarm at the resigned pace he chose to move at. From the way his power felt he seemed to have good reason as to the way he was moving. Soi-Fon looked over at Nemu and Omaeda, 'Those two won't be any good in this battle. It's going to have to be me or Uzumaki. Both of us would be better since Uzumaki doesn't seem to be that adverse to working as a team to fight.'

The figure spoke as the sand began to blow in the wind around him, "Who are you and why have you disturbed my slumber?" The person asked in a calm, yet somewhat ragged sounding voice that made Naruto's ears twitch.

"There's no time to mess around with this one." Soi-Fon said as she grabbed her Zanpakutou, "Jinteki Shakuset-!" She was stopped from releasing her Shikai by Naruto grabbing her right arm, "Uzumaki what are you-?"

"Just wait." He said as he started walking forward into the gusty sandstorm, 'There's no way… but that voice… It can't be someone else. No one else talks like that.' He found the figure in the sandstorm and walked towards him only to freeze once he got within range to actually see him, "Holy crap… Gaara?" Naruto said in shock and awe, his eyes wide in surprise.

The sandstorm died down, revealing the figure to the rest of the Shinigami. A man the same height as Naruto with spiky red hair that reached his neck stared back at him with light green eyes that had no real pupils. He had no eyebrows and black rings were around his eyes. On the left side of his forehead sat a kanji for love, but it was white and in bone. The man blinked a few times with no actual expression on his face even as he spoke curiously, "Uzumaki Naruto?"

XxX

(Meanwhile – Las Noches)

"Aizen-sama." An Arrancar with a bull-shaped skull over his head kneeled in front of Aizen who was sitting at his throne, "In the desert, the Hollow Runuganga has been destroyed."

Aizen smiled at the Arrancar, "So it seems Rudoboun. Do you have a plan of action you would like to take?"

Rudoboun stood up, still posturing submissively to Aizen, "Allow me to dispatch the Exequias to deal with these pests for you Aizen-sama. There is no need to waste the Espada on the fools that have dared to intrude on this land."

"Very well…" Aizen said, gesturing to him to do as he wished, "I'm putting this in your hands Rudoboun. Don't disappoint me." Once again, Rudoboun bowed to Aizen and left the room.

Ichimaru Gin appeared from a corner of the room with his usual smirk on his face, "Y'know, the Exequias are only good for one thing Aizen-san. What are ya thinking sending them out like that? 'S just a waste a' time to me. For us and them. They wouldn't have sent weaklings for this kinda thing ya' know."

Aizen just chuckled, "I know that Gin. You and I both know that the Exequias are utterly expendable. The most expendable portion of my forces. But they will serve a purpose. I will be able to see how the Seireitei are prepared to handle just a taste of my army. It should also provide some misdirection and make them think that is the extent of my Arrancar army's power."

XxX

(Karakura Town – Kurosaki Home/Clinic)

"Yeah I'm coming!" Ichigo yelled from the living room of his house as the doorbell rang. Due to the fact that his father Isshin and little sister Yuzu were busy with the clinic and his other little sister Karin was out playing sports with her friends he was the designated getter of the actual door to their home. It didn't bother him though. Rest was more than fine. The Soul Society had provided more than enough activity for his summer vacation twice over and then some.

He opened the door to find a childhood friend of his standing there with her arms crossed over her chest, "Tatsuki? What's up? You should have called or something before coming over."

Tatsuki sighed and looked into Ichigo's face, "Yeah well I'm not here to hang out or ask you for anything. I just came to talk for a moment."

"Sure." Ichigo said, wondering what she had to talk about. Then again he had been gone all summer so she couldn't talk to him about anything while he had been gone, "Go ahead, do you want to come in?"

Tatsuki shook her head and rubbed her arm before she began to talk, "I know, about what you and Orihime actually did this summer." She noticed him flinch and then break into a slight sweat at having his secret possibly exposed, "It's okay, I'm not dumb enough to actually say anything about it out loud for the world to know. Naruto told me that much at least."

Ichigo's panic dropped when he heard Tatsuki use the name of the weird blonde guy that helped him save Rukia, "Wait, Naruto? You know that guy? How?"

"Apparently…" Tatsuki said before a smile came to her face, "He's going to be my new trainer, and I can't wait! The guy is seriously strong, I don't think anyone at my dojo could lay a finger on him if he didn't want them to!"

Ichigo blinked a few times, "So why would he train you?" He asked, slightly bewildered before he noticed Tatsuki start to get mad, "No offense, but I've seen what the guy can do. I don't think you'll be pulling any of that stuff for a long time if ever. Trust me. I don't think a regular person can get that strong." He felt comfortable saying that because there wasn't anything normal about Naruto in the least.

Tatsuki's angry face turned to a toothy grin, "It's a good thing I'm not exactly normal then, isn't it?" Before Ichigo could dispute anything she was saying she pointed directly in his face, "I can see spirits Ichigo, and apparently I have some power in me called chakra that Naruto said he can work with. You and Orihime have been keeping secrets from me and fighting. Well now I'm directly involved, so next time don't hesitate to ask me for help if you need it."

"Help?" Ichigo said, not really understanding it, "Tatsuki what could you do to help me out?"

She stood frozen before rubbing the back of her neck sheepishly, "Uh… right now, I guess nothing. Just give me some time and you'll see though." Tatsuki turned and began to walk away, "That's all I wanted Ichigo. But there's one more thing; Naruto said he wanted to talk to you, but there's no real hurry. He just said he'd see you next week. Later." She said as she waved and left the premises.

Ichigo watched her leave, shaking his head as he walked back inside and shut the door behind him, "Man, and I thought the weirdness would stop after I came back from the Soul Society…"

XxX

(With Naruto and Shinigami – Hueco Mundo)

As the Shinigami that had come with Naruto ran to his side as the sandstorm faded, both Naruto and Gaara spoke at the same time, "What are you doing here?"

Naruto followed up and laid out his questions first, "Gaara, what are you doing here? How are you still alive, it's been thousands of years! And how did you end up being an Arrancar or even a Hollow in the first place?"

Gaara raised an eyebrow, "I'm here because I died Uzumaki. Do you have any questions that aren't simple?" He smirked when he saw Naruto get a tick mark on his head, "But has it really been thousands of years?"

"Around 2000." Naruto said, surprised at seeing his old friend there. Gaara was dressed in a white colored robe that covered all of his arms and legs with what looked to be a long beige scarf around his neck, "What happened to you?"

Gaara looked at Naruto for about thirty seconds before speaking, "I failed Naruto. I wasn't able to keep Madara away from you and you wound up getting the Kyuubi extracted from you. Sasuke killed me when I attempted to get you out."

Naruto put a hand on Gaara's shoulder, "Sakura-chan resurrected me. I'm sorry Gaara, it was my fault that all of that happened. We won though. It may have taken me a few years after that to get everything together but we did it. Madara was stopped." He then took a good look at Gaara's face and noticed that he really didn't look any different from when he was alive, "Gaara what happened?"

"The grief of failing you and everyone else turned me into a Hollow." Gaara said sadly, "I didn't roam for long before I became sick of my existence as a Hollow and pulled my mask off. I then used the sands of this desert to hide myself away, from the Hollow Barragan in particular. The 'ruler' of Hueco Mundo wanted me to join his army and I chose not to. I have been at one with the sand ever since that day. "

Soi-Fon spoke to the strangely docile Hollow. She would have tried to finish it by now, but Naruto seemed to know him from years in the past and he wouldn't take too kindly to that if she did. He would probably violently lash out and possibly leave her there, "But what of the massive Hollow that attacked us? It was under your control wasn't it?"

"Runuganga was my avatar as I slumbered that manifested from my power." Gaara explained, "I was aware of my surroundings in a loosely dreamlike state as he roamed under the sands, ever moving and keeping me safe from discovery or harm." He looked at his hands, "My power must have grown while I was asleep. I do not remember feeling this strong when I was last awake."

Naruto shook his head with a smile on his face, "This is so great… Now you can come back with me!" Naruto shouted as he grabbed Gaara in a massive hug, "Yeah!"

Gaara blinked and tried to struggle his way out of his old friend's grasp, "Please let go of me Naruto." Naruto did as instructed, "And how can I come with you? If I were to go to the Human World then the Shinigami would attempt to exterminate me, even if I were to just try and exist there."

Naruto turned around to Soi-Fon and the others, "You guys wouldn't do anything stupid like try to kill Gaara would you?" He asked with a dangerous gleam in his eye that only seemed to visibly shake Omaeda.

Soi-Fon scoffed and looked away from him, "If he is to join your team like the other one then he's your responsibility. Keeping him under watch is your job."

Gaara shook his head, "I have and would never attack a living soul. I had enough of that when I was alive. I simply slumbered while I was here to keep from fighting Barragan and dealing with the other aggressive Hollows in Hueco Mundo. I had enough of killing them to keep them away."

Naruto didn't want to just leave Gaara in Hueco Mundo. If they found him then someone else could do so now that the thing that kept him safe and hidden was destroyed, "Come on Gaara. I could use the company. Being immortal kind of sucks." Gaara cocked a nonexistent eyebrow, "It's a long story."

"Very well." Gaara said, surprising a lot of them by smiling at Naruto, "I will go with you. It would be… nice, to spend time with a friend again, and there is no separation of villages to keep us from communicating in this time either." Naruto happily extended his hand and Gaara wasted no time in shaking it, "I do have to ask what you are doing here though."

Naruto sighed, "It's a long story. I'll tell you later."

Nemu blinked and walked up to Naruto, staying behind him to keep herself out of Gaara's line of attack just in case, "Is it really wise to trust this Arrancar Uzumaki-san? He could be trying to fool you and sneak attack us. He could be an agent of Aizen Sousuke like the other Arrancar you came across."

Gaara looked at the girl standing behind Naruto and then at the other Shinigami around him, "I see time hasn't made you any less busy."

Naruto shrugged, "Got to fight the still-life somehow Gaara. The world didn't just settle into peace I'm sorry to say. Right now it's in more trouble than ever, and the trouble is centered around here in Hueco Mundo."

Shaking his head, Gaara crossed his arms once more, "I am sorry Naruto. I know nothing of this world if you truly say that it is 2000 years since my death. I am unable to assist you in this scope."

Naruto nodded to his old friend and turned back to Soi-Fon, "So do we keep going?"

"Yes." Soi-Fon said, feeling the former tension when Gaara revealed himself having fully faded from the scene beforehand, "We still have nothing of actual substance to take back with us. If this Gaara isn't an Arrancar in Aizen's army then we still have no clue as to what they are capable of, their actual numbers, their strength. We have nothing."

"I will go with you." Gaara said, putting a hand on Naruto's shoulder, "It would be good to catch up with an old friend, and I believe I could be of some help to you in some way. Just one moment." Gaara kneeled down and buried his hand completely in the sand.

Omaeda raised an eyebrow at Gaara when he shut his eyes and looked towards Naruto, "What's he doing?"

Naruto kept his eyes on his friend as he continued to do what it was he had been trying when it finally hit him, "Gaara can probably sense anything in the sand. The way that I can sense life and power easily in Sage Mode, Gaara can probably do that anytime he's in contact with sand in Hueco Mundo, or maybe anytime he's around sand in general."

Nemu's eyes actually widened in surprise at that fact, "From what I can deduce, all of Hueco Mundo is covered in sand. So if you are correct, Gaara-san can potentially sense anything in Hueco Mundo if he knew what to look for."

Gaara's eyes snapped open, "You are supposed to be the only Shinigami in this realm, correct?" He asked Soi-Fon due to her wearing the captain's haori and looking like she was in charge of the others.

"We're searching for the location of a trio of rogue Shinigami." She responded to him in kind, "The former captain of the 5th Division Aizen Sousuke has conspired with two other captains to attempt to destroy the Seireitei." She noticed Gaara giving her a blank look, but could tell that he was lost, "Do you know what that is?" He shook his head, "I thought as much. Just as clueless as Uzumaki…"

Gaara ignored the crack at him and his fellow former shinobi, "I can sense a Shinigami's Reiryoku, however it is very far from here and mixed in with other powerful signatures that surround it." He pointed in a direction, "That way. It feels far enough to take a few days to get to."

Naruto grunted and kicked at the sand softly, "Fuck. To hell with it, let's keep going." He said as Gaara stood up from sensing his way around, "Think you can keep up Gaara? You never were the fastest back in the day."

Gaara just stared at Naruto until disappearing, a low booming noise erupting from where he had been standing moments before. He reappeared a short distance away with his arms crossed, "Are you all coming?"

Naruto chuckled and began to follow until he was grabbed on the arm by Soi-Fon who then spoke to him, "Do not stay my blade again Uzumaki. It doesn't matter that he used to be your friend in his past life, here he is a Hollow, a monster that survives off of devouring the souls of others. The next time you do anything like that you will be defending yourself instead of them."

Naruto just leered at her with no amount of care in his gaze that he usually looked at her with, "Wrong or right isn't black or white. Just because Gaara's an Arrancar doesn't make him evil." He jerked his arm out of her grip, "I've met humans more evil, even a Shinigami more evil than most Hollows. Most of them operate off of instinct and the ones that are aware have the same ability that any human or soul has for good or evil."

"It's just lucky that I have no standing orders to kill Hollows on sight." Soi-Fon said, looking away from Naruto's eyes, which seemed to steel over once they locked with hers. She couldn't find herself able to meet that stare. For some reason it made her feel weak. She was a damn captain of the Gotei 13, who was he to make her feel this way for no reason?

"You need to relax sometimes, I swear… I'm going to make sure you chill out a bit before you leave Karakura Town." Naruto then began walking after Gaara and the two lieutenants up ahead before adding something on the end, "Don't seriously threaten me again Jooubachi. Usually when you chase me it's fun. I like you a lot, and I'll keep thinking of you like that until you do something like attack my friends. I wouldn't have stopped you for no reason."

She stared at his back until returning her features to normal and walking along at her usual reserved gait, "Whatever Uzumaki. We still have work to do."

XxX

(Karakura Town)

Tatsuki and Orihime walked with Yoruichi through the base that Naruto still had to have his clones outfit to look like a legitimate publishing company. The second-in-command of the whole operation was currently walking around with a clipboard taking notes on what needed to be done when he and the others got back from Hueco Mundo, "Sorry Tatsuki, he's not here." She turned back towards the girl in question, "He said he'd train you _next week_. I'm sure he'd like that you're eager, but Naruto didn't just throw out a random timeframe to start."

"Well that sucks…" Tatsuki muttered lowly, "Now I'm all excited and I've got nothing to do for a whole week." She wasn't looking where she was going and bumped into someone, "Hey!" She looked up to find the guy that Naruto said was his assistant glaring down at her.

Hidan stared at Tatsuki for a long while, making her feel slightly uncomfortable as there was just something about the guy that didn't feel normal. Eventually he grunted and turned to Yoruichi, "This is the girl that Uzumaki-brat said he was going to train?"

Yoruichi smiled at the usually hostile Arrancar in hiding, "Yes Hidan, this is Tatsuki. You know Orihime by now since she was here yesterday too. She's thinking about helping us out as well, so be nice."

"I don't do nice…" Hidan said, "I do kill and _don't_ kill."

Yoruichi gave him a dry look as the two younger girls recoiled at his somewhat serious tone at how he said that, "Isn't he just lovely?" She asked sarcastically before thinking of something, "Wait, Hidan you were a shinobi like Naruto was weren't you?"

Hidan gave her an offended look, "You say it like neither of us are anymore. You let Uzumaki-brat hear you say that and he's going to tear that pretty little ass of yours up." He ignored her spike in Reiatsu, whether it was for his language or vulgar content of conversation, he didn't care, "We're different in how we fight, but at some point we were trained almost the same way. I can see what she's got at the very least."

"So, basement?" Yoruichi said, pointing down with a raised eyebrow.

"Basement." Hidan confirmed, turning back around and heading back from where he had just come from.

Yoruichi led the girls downstairs, following Hidan who was muttering about having to turn and go back downstairs after he had just gotten through training his other powers. Once they got there, Tatsuki gawked at the sheer size of the place, "How is this under a building?"

Orihime brightly informed her, "Mister Urahara is really good at making these places! He has one under his shop too!"

Hidan was standing out in the middle of an open area waiting impatiently, "Is she going to get over here or what? I don't have all day you know, I'm hungry!"

Yoruichi rolled her eyes and turned to Tatsuki, "Go ahead. Don't worry he won't do anything too bad, and you wanted to train anyway didn't you?"

"I didn't even bring my gi." Tatsuki said indignantly as she walked out to face Hidan who scoffed.

"A gi?" He gestured to himself wearing his street clothes, "Do I look like I'm wearing anything like that? You should know that you're not going to be in a gi for an actual fight so suck it up missy." He spread his arms wide and tilted his head to the side, "Okay go ahead."

"What?" Tatsuki said in disbelief, she had already been in her fighting stance ready to go at this point.

"Go ahead." Hidan repeated, still standing wide open for attack, "Give me your best shot, your very best shot. Don't hold back at all, hit me like I'm a heavy-bag." Tatsuki looked back at Yoruichi and Orihime, getting a nod out of Yoruichi, "Oi! What the fuck are you looking at her for? Do you need permission to throw a goddamn punch? Hit me already bitch!"

Tatsuki growled at Hidan and ran directly towards him, 'He wants my best shot, let's see how you like this then you prick!' She let out a loud yell of exertion and delivered a textbook straight right hand right to Hidan's face. The hit sent him sliding back across the ground, but to her surprise he never fell or stumbled back even a step, "What? That should have broken your jaw!"

"Who said it didn't?" Hidan said, slightly mumbling. An angry red mark appeared on his face where Tatsuki hit him as he started walking back towards her, "That was a pretty good shot. You injured my jaw… but Uzumaki would have snapped my neck if he had a clean shot like that one."

"W-What?" Tatsuki took a step back as Hidan seemed to walk back towards her as if nothing had just happened, "Snap your neck? And you're not dead?"

Hidan smirked and chuckled darkly, "You can't kill this body with physical damage. I'm pretty much immortal if you didn't know." He saw Tatsuki's jaw drop, "Uzumaki-brat told you about the Hollows and Shinigami and all of that right? He didn't tell you jack about either of us though."

"No way. That can't be true." Tatsuki said defiantly.

Yoruichi sighed and covered Orihime's eyes with her hands, "Yeah, you're not going to want to see this next part."

Hidan grabbed the cylinder around his neck and extended the spike. Tatsuki bristled, thinking he was going to attack her with it but recoiled in horror when Hidan drove it directly into his chest, "What the hell! Are you insane?"

"Yes, but that's not what you should have been paying attention to." Hidan said, pulling the spike out of his chest and letting it recede back into the cylinder, "So you can pretty much beat on me as much as you want. My spirit body is way more durable than this one but in this body you couldn't kill me with any weapon you could possibly get your hands on." He walked towards her and found that she was shaking slightly, putting a frown on his face, "No more of that. If you're afraid of just that then you might as well quit now. No one's even done anything to you yet."

Tatsuki swallowed a nervous lump in her throat and nodded.

Hidan stepped back from her a few feet and stood across from her, "So I'll guess that you at least know how to generate your own chakra. I would have at least told you how to do that much before leaving to run around Hueco Mundo raising hell… bastard won't let me go." He saw Tatsuki make the ram seal that Naruto taught her and allow her chakra to build, "Good."

Orihime called out across the field to both of them, "Mister Hidan, do you want me to heal your face?"

He looked up at Orihime and watched her shiver slightly at the expression on his face, "No. I'm fine. Nothing like a little pain to let you know you're alive. I'll have to settle with my own since if I used the jutsu I want to use on Uzumaki-brat's protégé before he ever even got to her he'd tear me apart and scatter me to the four corners of the planet."

Yoruichi smirked over from the sidelines, "So are you going to teach her anything?"

A grin came to Hidan's face as he looked at Tatsuki and she felt as if she needed to get out of there fast or she might wind up paying for it, "So what do you humans know of the almighty Jashin-sama? If you believe in him as I do faithfully you may be granted with-." He was shut up when he found a boulder chucked at him by Yoruichi that smashed into him.

"Not that…" Yoruichi growled out threateningly as she walked over and escorted Tatsuki away from Hidan, "I guess you'll just have to wait until Naruto gets back to learn any of his tricks Tatsuki."

Orihime looked over at Hidan worriedly to see him sputtering with the boulder covering his torso, "Is he going to be okay?" Yoruichi shrugged and led Tatsuki back upstairs. Instead of directly following, Orihime ran over to the boulder Hidan was under, kneeling by him, "Are you alright?"

Hidan held up a shaky thumbs-up, "Immortal…" He choked out before coughing again, "But could you get the rock off of me? My legs don't seem to be working right now."

Orihime nodded and stood back, "Okay Mister Hidan, one second. Koten Zanshun (Solitary Sacred Cutting Shield)!" One of the petals on Orihime's hair clip transformed into a flash of light that hit the boulder and pulverized it, freeing Hidan. Orihime ran over and kneeled over his injured body once more, "Hold on for just one more moment, Souten Kisshun (Twin Sacred Return Shield)."

Hidan watched in surprise as two of the flowers on her hair clip this time went to the opposite ends of his body and engulfed him in a barrier that began to heal him. Hidan looked up and met Orihime's eyes, "Okay after seeing that, I'm with Uzumaki-brat, and I'm not stark-raving mad when I'm saying this... I think it would be fucking awesome if you were on the squad."

Orihime just smiled as she continued to heal his body, "Maybe."

XxX

(One Day Later – With Naruto – Hueco Mundo)

The expedition group comprised of Soi-Fon, Omaeda, Nemu, and Naruto followed Gaara as they continued to move through the desert of Hueco Mundo. Despite cutting a swift pace across the landscape, nothing seemed to ever change in appearance, letting them know just how vast the place was.

No one had let out any complaints, even Omaeda lest he suffer his captain's wrath at making her squad look weak out in the field, but even Soi-Fon and Naruto's patience had begun to wear thin. It had been nothing but running and momentary rest for the night, followed by more running the next day. They hadn't even run across anymore Hollows all the while.

"Gaara-san." Nemu said, getting the red-head's attention, "Can you tell me what of all of the Hollows in Hueco Mundo? Surely there have to be some around somewhere."

Gaara answered her, "As I'm sure Naruto told you before, most of the notable Hollows, what you refer to as 'Menos class' reside underground. Weaker Hollows normally do not come out and roam the deserts for risk of being devoured by those more powerful than themselves. They instead head to the Human World for what they perceive to be 'easy prey'. Most Hollows simply hide and exist on their own, waiting until they are provoked or are driven to a great enough feeling of emptiness to hunt about or as I said head to the Human World."

Soi-Fon focused and began to scan around for anything close before narrowing her eyes, "Something is coming this way."

"Is it strong?" Naruto asked her, getting a shake of the head in response, "Oh well, play it safe. Ambush?" Soi-Fon nodded and Naruto grabbed her, surprising her as he made hand-seals before she could even complain, "Close your eyes. Doton: Moguragakure no Jutsu (Earth Release: Hiding Like a Mole Jutsu)!" Naruto and Soi-Fon then vanished underground beneath the sand.

Gaara looked over at Nemu and Omaeda and drew his spear, "Take a breath." He said before stabbing it into the ground and causing a small whirlpool of sand that sucked them all in, hiding them underneath as well.

After a moment of no motion in the area from any of the people hidden underground, a pair of figures chasing another smaller, cloaked person across the sands came running over the area, followed by a large eel-like Hollow. One of the two had a large body with a yellow bodysuit covered in polka-dots as clothing. They also had a very large head, almost the size of their body, that was covered in a mask that resembled a tiki mask.

The other of the two chasing after the smaller figure was rather skinny with an insect-like mask on its face complete with mandibles and horns. The right eye was covered with a purple veil. This one had a purple body but the torso was covered by white armor as well as a purple loincloth. The Hollow hole was positioned on the belly slightly under the armor.

Just as they kept running, a pair of hands shot up from the sand, grabbing the two pursuing figures by their ankles and holding them in place, "Huh?" They both said just as Soi-Fon jumped out of the sand and smashed them both with hard kicks that sent them flying.

The large eel-like Hollow stopped in its tracks when a large hand of sand grabbed it around the body and hoisted it up into the air. Gaara then revealed himself from underneath the ground followed by Nemu and Omaeda who sputtered and spit out sand, "What, do I look like I breathe sand?"

Nemu simply dusted herself off, "Gaara-san instructed you to take a breath before going under."

Soi-Fon shoved her arm into the sand where Naruto's hands had been sticking out from and pulled up sharply, lifting Naruto up from the sand by his throat with one arm with an angry look on her face while she shook him repeatedly, "I didn't need you to drag me under the sand… I could have hidden myself without you Uzumaki!"

Naruto got her to release him and brushed the sand off of his sage coat, "Where else could you have possibly hidden?" He asked her rhetorically before turning to the giant sand hand holding the large Hollow up, "Gaara could you go ahead and finish up so we can keep going?"

"No!" The small cloaked figure that had been chased yelled out, getting everyone's attention, "Why did you beat up my brothers?" The little figure pulled the down the hood of the cloak to reveal a little girl with blue-green hair and hazel eyes. A crimson line stretched horizontally across her face under her eyes and a scar came down her forehead to her nose. However her most noticeable trait was the skull mask on top of her head that had a crack in it and was missing teeth.

Naruto walked over to the little girl and kneeled down, "But weren't they chasing after you?"

She nodded happily, "Yep, it's eternal pursuit! It's a game!" She said with a lisp.

Naruto face-faulted into the sand and Soi-Fon palmed her face, "Okay… let's just get a move on." Soi-Fon said, done with the whole situation, "This is obviously another Arrancar that has nothing to do with Aizen's army at all. We're getting nothing out of this."

"Just wait." Naruto said, urging her to hold on for a moment before he put a hand on the little Arrancar's head, "What are you doing out here all by yourself?" He couldn't sense much power from her at all.

"Nel isn't alone." The little girl said as the other two that Soi-Fon had kicked away earlier made their way back over rapidly, leaving a trail of dust in their wake, "Nel has her brothers Dondochakka and Pesche."

The two other Arrancar stopped at Nel's side, panting heavily at running all the way back as fast as they could. Soi-Fon's eye twitched at seeing them just get right back up from her attacks, "They got up from that. Damn limiter… Why did Yamamoto-sotaichou put a soul-limiter on us? Even if we were staying in the Human World we would eventually have to come to Hueco Mundo."

Naruto did a double take as he turned to her, "You _still _have that on? Why the fuck didn't you tell me that before we got here? I thought you'd gotten it taken off before we left the base."

"There's nothing we can do about it without good reason to have it removed." Soi-Fon explained to Naruto who didn't like the news that he had taken a handicapped crew into the hornet's nest, "It's protocol for all lieutenant and captain-level Shinigami."

"Okay…" Naruto said, holding the bridge of his nose, "And that's as far as we're going on this little trip into Hueco Mundo." He said with finality, "Yamamoto-jiji better get his shit together… sending you guys in without full power."

"Why leave?" The skinny Arrancar, Pesche said, "If you go anywhere else you could run into Shinigami or something like that."

Nemu blinked, keeping her dulcet expression on her face, "We are Shinigami."

"I'm not." Gaara said, finally allowing his large hand made of sand to put the eel-Hollow down, "I'm an Arrancar."

"I'm not either." Naruto said as well, "I'm a human/sage/immortal." He noticed everyone looking at him, "Yes I introduce myself like that all the time, you got a problem with it?"

The larger Arrancar, Dondochakka started backing away with Nel and Pesche, "W-What are Shinigami doing here? Are you going to try to kill us?"

Gaara walked forward towards them, "That won't happen."

"Yeah." Naruto said, agreeing with his monotone-speaking old friend, "I don't attack things based purely on what they are. I'm a sage, and all forms of life are precious to me… even forms of life that are created after death." He made his way over to Nel again making sure they all knew he meant no harm, "How does a Hollow end up with brothers anyway?"

Dondochakka picked Nel up and held her out, "Well we found her just out here in the desert one day and we decided we couldn't just leave her out here like that. So we decided to take Nel with us and make her our sister."

Omaeda just stood back picking his nose while this was happening, "Man Hueco Mundo is a weird place. I'm definitely staying away from here in the future. The place is ugly and bland… not anything befitting a noble."

Nemu just ignored him to keep trying to obtain any data she could on Hueco Mundo until she stopped and turned in a direction, just staring, "Something is coming."

Hearing the usually silent lieutenant speak up in warning, all of the others snapped into action. Gaara kneeled down and tried sensing the immediate area, "She is right. There are multiple signatures coming this way."

"Dangerous?" Naruto asked, ready for another fight to clear the area so that he could summon the Gedou and take them all home.

An angry scoff came from Soi-Fon, "We wasted our ambush on those weaklings."

Gaara didn't say anything and drew his strange spear once again before stabbing it into the ground. The sand quaked for a moment before in the distance a blast fired dozens of figures into the air. In the sky, they righted themselves and landed nearby the expedition team. Each of the figures wore white uniforms and had human-shaped skulls as heads. Without even saying a word they all drew their swords threateningly at the others.

Naruto and Soi-Fon just gave them all deadpan looks before using their speed techniques to disappear from sight. In a matter of seconds a large number of the attacking force had been battered, smashed and beaten away with just their bare hands. Soi-Fon and Naruto reappeared after disposing of a good chunk of the enemy, "These enemies barely have enough Reiatsu to qualify for potential positions as seated officers. And I'm being polite about gauging their chances for even that." Soi-Fon said, disgusted at being confronted by such weak foes. Even at not even 30% of her power she was more than enough to handle this alone.

"Right then." Naruto said, reaching into a pocket of his sage coat to retrieve the hilt of the Raijin no Ken, "So why are we wasting time just talking about it?" He tilted his head to acknowledge even Omaeda getting in on some of the action, fighting off more than a few of the strange Arrancar enemies without even using his Shikai, "I bet I get more than you do."

Soi-Fon's eyes let off a shine at the challenge, "If I win you can never see Yoruichi-sama in a familiar manner again."

Naruto shrugged, "Sure, and I'll tell you my terms after I win. Now-." With that, they both headed into the fray of fighting their strange foes once more.

Naruto simply headed right in and cut them down with the Raijin no Ken, Soi-Fon went around the outside of the force, taking out whatever stragglers weren't involved enough in the fighting to place her in the path of Naruto's onslaught. Nemu just sat back trying to examine the corpses of the fallen skull-Arrancar that she could find, only paying attention to the battle for a moment to smash one of them that tried to sneak up on her with a brutally efficient kick to the head.

Meanwhile, Gaara just stood back observing and keeping Nel, Pesche, Dondochakka, and their large eel-Hollow safe from where he was, 'Who was it that dispatched these soldiers to attack?' He wondered, 'They came from the direction that I sensed the misplaced Shinigami's powers in.' Before he could think too much on it, the battle was over as the formerly embattled team members walked back over.

Soi-Fon had a frown on her face, Omaeda had a look of amazement on his, and Naruto had a grin on his face all the while he was swinging the Raijin no Ken around like a toy, "Kami, I love this thing!" He looked down at Soi-Fon and put a hand on her shoulder, "Don't fuck with the Jedi master love." He then heaved out a grunt as he found Soi-Fon's foot in his stomach.

"Just take us back already since you're not going to take us any further… I have to report." Soi-Fon said, taking her foot out of Naruto's torso and walking in front of him.

Naruto rubbed his belly where he was kicked as he looked over at Nemu carrying one of the dead Arrancar towards them, "You ready to go Nemu-chan?" She nodded, satisfied at actually getting a test subject to take back with her. Naruto began making a long chain of hand-seals before smashing his hand against the ground, his eyes flickering with the Rinnegan for just a moment, "Gedou (Outer Path)!"

The disembodied demonic head sprang from the ground and once again grabbed everyone to swallow them up before receding back, leaving the desert empty except the bodies of the deceased littering the sands.

XxX

(Karakura Town – Naruto's Base)

The portal reformed in the air and spat them all out high above the ground of the training room. Naruto, Gaara, and Omaeda all fell to the ground in a heap, with Naruto immediately jumping to his feet after his fall and glaring at the disappearing Gedou as Nemu and Soi-Fon dropped to the ground safely, "I think that stupid thing is sexist or something. This is the fourth time that piece of shit spat me out like that." He turned towards a groaning Omaeda, "You okay big man?"

The large lieutenant rolled over and sat up, "I'm fine… luckily my neck broke my fall."

Gaara got up off of the ground glaring at Naruto, "I could have formed my own way to this plane Naruto."

Naruto sneered at Gaara who he could guess was scolding him for flagrant use of Gedou, "Well next time cut us a Garganta yourself so that I don't have to hear you complain."

Soi-Fon and Nemu had taken the time provided to go back to their Gigai and were about to leave when Naruto called out to them, "Ah, ah! Wait a minute Jooubachi, you lost the bet."

Soi-Fon turned around abruptly to see Naruto smirking at her, "I wasn't even at 100%. You can't count that."

Naruto chuckled, "I can because you accepted and actually made terms to the bet. Now I want to tell you what I'm getting out of winning so get over here." Soi-Fon glared at him until he made a gesture telling her to go over to him, "I can say it out loud, I just thought you'd want to save some face in front of your lieutenant." She narrowed her eyes at him but walked over nonetheless. Standing by Naruto he whispered in her ear, and whatever he told her got her to widen her eyes and shake her head slowly, "You have to do it." He said before she could dispute anything, "You need to take a break anyway. If anything I'm doing you a favor."

"When?" Soi-Fon growled out, wanting to jump out of her Gigai again and possibly kick him in the head.

"Tonight." Naruto answered calmly, "If you really don't want to do it, we should just get it out of the way as soon as we can, but you aren't getting out of this one."

Soi-Fon turned away with a huff and walked away with a blush on her face, 'Grr, I'm going to kill that man one of these days, I swear!'

"Wow, so this is the Human World eh?"

That voice not only stopped Soi-Fon in her tracks, but got everyone else in the room to come to an abrupt stop as well. Everyone hurried over to a different area of the room and found the three Arrancar that they thought they had left in the desert, Nel, Pesche, and Dondochakka, sitting around looking at the landscape of the room, "It looks like Hueco Mundo but with rocks!" The skinny Arrancar Pesche said.

Naruto palmed his face while the others all looked at him strangely, "I swear, I didn't do that on purpose…" He said when he felt Soi-Fon and Gaara glaring at him, "The fucking Gedou hates me…"

XxX

(Hueco Mundo – Las Noches)

Aizen walked through the halls of Las Noches, flanked by Ichimaru and Tousen Kaname, "I believe I've let them get enough of a chance to scout my territory; however this won't be the battlefield as they anticipate it to be. I believe it's about time I run some general reconnaissance of my own."

"Rudoboun and his Exequias failed." Tousen said rather distastefully at the turn of events.

Gin simply kept his usual closed-eye smirk on his face as he spoke next, "Did you really expect 'em them to? We didn't send that many of 'em for them to even stand a chance against anyone the Gotei 13 would think would be worth sending. That was just cannon fodder."

"Gin is right." Aizen said to Tousen, "Only any Arrancar with any substance or actual skill and power will be of any use in the coming battle. Rudoboun's troops are only needed for one thing and open battle against seated officers is not what that thing is." Despite what most would perceive as a setback, Aizen never stopped smiling, "I think a show of force is called for. Don't you agree? A message to be sent to the enemy of just what resisting will get them in the end."

* * *

**Okay, I put in Gaara because... well, he's Gaara. That 's the only real reason I should need. Gaara's awesome. But anyway, he and Hidan were the only ones I had planned on using and my mental mind will not be swayed. I AM A ROCK! Gaara serves a purpose, has a reason for being a Hollow, and has an out for living as long as he has as an Arrancar. I covered all of my bases because I'm the man.**

**No smart-alecky remarks today, I'm all tapped out of smartass for the rest of the weekend. I'll be ornery enough for a gem of a rant of some sort next time around I suppose, not today though.**

**Kenchi out.**


	15. Sophomore Slump

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. To hell with Kishimoto and Kubo. They think they're better than me because of their money grossing manga franchises?

…Well, they are… But that's not the goddamn point!

We'll get those terrorists! Now watch this drive…

Enjoy the chapter.

**Chapter 15: Sophomore Slump**

* * *

Naruto and his contingent had returned late in the evening, and due to the terms of his bet with 2nd Division captain and executive of the Onmitsukidou, Soi-Fon, Naruto was not around for debriefing… and by debriefing it would have been more akin to Yoruichi grilling Naruto on what had happened and why he had come back with not one, not two, not even three, but _four_ more Arrancar. What the hell was this place, a rent-free boarding house?

Thus when morning came and Yoruichi found her way downstairs where she saw Naruto sitting and eating a bowl of ramen across from Gaara she decided to get to the bottom of things right then.

Walking over to them both she saw Naruto wearing a school uniform and that the quiet red-haired Arrancar she had been introduced to last night was wearing grey jeans and a short-sleeved burgundy shirt as he watched Naruto eat, "Some things just never change." He said to Yoruichi as she walked in amid Naruto ravenous decimation of his morning treat.

Yoruichi sat down between the two of them and crossed her legs as she waited for Naruto to finish, which took about twelve more seconds after she sat down, broth and all. She raised an eyebrow as she saw him wipe his mouth of any leftover residue from his meal, "So did you just hold your breath for the minute plus that I saw you eating for or what? Actually nevermind… I just want to know why you brought back so many extras with you."

Naruto blinked, "The only one I meant to bring back with me was Gaara. Speaking of the others what did you do with them after I left with Soi-Fon last night for our bet?"

Yoruichi sighed and shook her head, waving her ponytail back and forth, "Well telling them I was a Shinigami and then telling them to come with me didn't play out too well so I left them down in the training field. They should be fine down there for one night, especially if they don't want to leave." She then pointed over at Gaara, "Is he in a Gigai?" Naruto nodded, "What, did you get up extra early and go get him one?"

Naruto scoffed, "Get up early? Gaara never slept, he's an insomniac."

"I am not an insomniac Naruto." Gaara said in his dry tone that Yoruichi figured she would have to get accustomed to as his regular voice, "That left me once I reached the grave. I was just asleep for thousands of years, do you really think that the first thing that I want to do after waking up is sleep again?"

"Good point." Naruto said, "But still, you didn't have to keep me awake with you just because you didn't want to sleep. I wanted to dream my sweet dreams damn it. I had a good night last night." He said with a rather stupid grin on his face.

Yoruichi smirked over at him before resting her chin on her hand, "So did you have a good time with my little bee Naruto?"

Naruto chuckled and leaned back in his chair, "It took a good two hours to get her to loosen up, but after that I think I was able to get her to enjoy herself. She's way nicer to me when she knows that nobody else is watching us."

"I knew you could get her to like you." Yoruichi insisted, grabbing a hold of Naruto's cheek.

Naruto let her pull on his cheek for a second before whipping his head around to get her off, still smiling, "What are you talking about? I always knew I'd get on Jooubachi's good side."

"Before or after she tried to chase you across the Soul Society and stab you?" Yoruichi quipped in enjoyment.

"After." Naruto said, not rising to the joke.

"Aww." Yoruichi stood up and walked behind Naruto, wrapping her arms around his neck and hugging the back of his head against her chest tightly, "It's so cute! My big high school boy on his first big date the day before the school year starts!" Even Gaara had an amused look on his face at the scene and Yoruichi's dialogue.

Naruto's face didn't hold any embarrassment or emotion over Yoruichi's teasing as she continued to hug his head, "This doesn't bother me at all, I just want to know one thing and I want you to answer me honestly Yoruichi-chan. Does that make you hot? Because if it does I can leave a clone for you to play with and everything." He smirked when she stopped holding onto his head and looked over at Gaara, "You see Gaara? That's how you get a girl to stop teasing you, tease her harder right back."

Gaara nodded, "I see… Well that's good to know." Naruto then stood up and stood in front of Gaara looking down at him expectantly, "What?"

"Don't 'what' me?" Naruto said to Gaara with an evil grin on his face, "You don't know the first thing about living in this time. And what better place to throw you into the deep end of the pool so to speak than to make you go to school to suffer like I'll suffer? I enrolled you this morning while Urahara was giving you your Gigai." He reached down to grab Gaara when a wave of sand blocked his hand, "You can still do that in your Gigai? Cool." The sand then grabbed a hold of his entire arm, "Wait, I mean not cool! Not cool Gaara!"

"Yes cool." Gaara deadpanned as he made his sand throw Naruto across the table, sending his empty ramen bowl flying along with him into the kitchen, "You see Yoruichi-san, that's how you get Naruto to leave you alone. Just throw him around a bit."

"I already knew that Gaara." Yoruichi said with a smile, "Thank you though. But Naruto is right, you should go to school. He can cover for you, but you really do need to know how this world works if you're going to live here and work with us."

Naruto stomped back out of the kitchen and stopped in front of Gaara, staring at him with a twitching eye, "Rule number one; I'm number one. Rule number two; don't do that shit in public… ever… seriously. If someone goes to touch you and an arm of sand bitch-slaps them across the face that will bring up a lot of explaining that I don't want to have to deal with B.S-ing my way out of. No jutsu or sand in public."

Gaara looked over at Yoruichi and got a nod from her, telling him that Naruto was telling the truth, "Fine then. No jutsu or sand in public. And I will go with you to this school… even though I already had to go through the Academy in our time."

"I know right?" Naruto added on with a sigh in full agreement before waving his hand dismissively, "Go get changed into the uniform in your room so we can get the hell out of here. I've got too much stuff to do today to be late."

Gaara nodded and headed upstairs to the room gifted to him by Yoruichi the previous night leaving Naruto and Yoruichi alone. Naruto turned around to head off and get more ramen when he felt Yoruichi grab a hold of his arm, getting him to look at her. She looked right back up at him with a gleam in her golden eyes, "Would you leave a clone like you suggested?"

Naruto stared at her for a moment before looking up at the ceiling as if he could see through to Gaara's room. He looked down back at her with a similar spark in his eye, "School starts in forty-five minutes, I can get Gaara there in five. Fuck making a clone, I'll do it myself." He said, getting a grin out of Yoruichi as he picked her up and ran upstairs.

XxX

(One Hour Later – Karakura High School)

Naruto and Gaara walked through the halls both dressed in school uniforms. Gaara just stared at Naruto shaking his head while Naruto looked straight ahead with a massive grin on his face, "You are a complete deviant." Gaara commented. It wasn't like he didn't hear anything, he was on the same damn floor of the massive building that they were. Yoruichi was quite vocal in her enjoyment of Naruto's ministrations, so much so that they were now late.

"Never said I wasn't." Naruto replied, his smile never leaving his face, "Kami, I love that woman. My sweet kitty-kitty..." He said, eyes glassing over in reminiscence before Gaara snapped his fingers in front of his face, "I'm alright."

"No you're weren't." Gaara said, taking in the sights of the school but making sure he didn't look too confused. It wasn't a big deal anyway, things didn't seem that different inside of school from the Academy he went to in his childhood. Outside was completely different though, but he'd have time to explore that later, "I need you to keep me from slipping up and blowing my cover on the first day so shape up."

"Hey, I'm your boss now Kazekage-sama." Naruto chimed in gleefully, popping Gaara in the shoulder with a good-natured shot, "So you can't tell me to do anything now. As a matter of fact I have seniority over you so listen to your senpai like a good little kohai."

Gaara just turned his seafoam green eyes onto Naruto and stared at him for long enough to let Naruto remember how much Gaara could unnerve him back in the day. Was it wrong to admit that he actually missed that? "I will eat your unhappiness."

Naruto simply turned his head back forward and led Gaara down the hall before stopping at their homeroom, "Alright here we go. Just be cool and everything should be all good, I've got your back Gaara."

"Why would you need to have my back?" Gaara asked, keeping Naruto from reaching for the door.

Naruto gave him a dry look and opened his mouth to speak before shaking his head, thinking better of the whole thing and just thinking about letting Gaara wing it to show him how screwed he would be without help. With this in mind, Naruto slid the door open and walked into the class.

The teacher from last year, Miss Ochi looked at Naruto and smiled seeing him again, "Uzumaki-san." That actually surprised him, he only showed up for one day right at the end of the year and he didn't leave that much of an impression to expect anyone in that class to remember who he was… well except for Ichigo and the others, but that was for a completely different reason, "I saw that you were on my class roster for this year. Hopefully we'll be seeing more of you."

Naruto nodded and walked in with a grin, "Yeah, sorry I'm late, I just had to bring someone else to class." He pointed behind him at Gaara who was standing in the doorway with his arms crossed, "Introduce yourself already."

Gaara rolled his eyes but walked in and stood at the front of the class anyway, "My name is Gaara." And he left it at that. Everyone looked at him expecting him to continue but he did no such thing. Miss Ochi had his full name in her class roster and that was what it was so she didn't push him to make him say anymore than that.

"Smooth…" Naruto said, palming his face before grabbing Gaara's arm, "I'll stick with him to make sure he gets the way things work." He 'offered' as he grabbed Gaara and dragged him to a seat very close to Ichigo, Orihime, Chad, Uryuu, and Tatsuki, "What's up you guys?" Naruto asked as he got Gaara to sit and found his own seat.

Ichigo looked at Naruto with wide eyes and pointed at him, "Why are you here?"

Naruto looked around and noticed a few of the other students looking at him, "Well Ichigo, this place is called school. School is a place where guys my age have to go or random cops will grab us and throw us in here or in jail for being delinquents."

Ichigo was about to exclaim that he didn't mean 'that' version of why he was there, he wanted the real reason. Before he could say anything however, Uryuu cut in, "Show some tact Kurosaki. Do you really expect him to tell you here? At least wait until later to ask otherwise all you're going to get are smart-ass answers."

"Exactly." Naruto said in conjunction with Uryuu's defense of him, "I'll tell you later so just chill out and wait… and meet Gaara." He said, pointing over at Gaara, "He works with me now so play nice!"

Ichigo looked at Gaara and blinked for a moment before extending his hand, "Uh hi. I'm Kurosaki Ichigo." Gaara wordlessly took his hand and shook it, "So, what's with the rings around his eyes?" Ichigo asked bluntly.

Uryuu glared at Ichigo, "Are you always going to be a rude bastard to everyone you meet?" Uryuu said to him angrily. Naruto had pretty much earned his trust and proved himself to be far more than capable where he was concerned. Yeah, he was kind of an airhead, but if he could act like that and survive then more power to him. Any friend of Naruto had to be a good enough person to at least allow a chance to trust, "It's nice to meet you Gaara-san."

Gaara nodded but remained silent, choosing to follow Naruto's lead as he seemed to know these people. Naruto turned forward in his seat, "Look, we can talk about this later. Right now introduce yourselves to Gaara, I'm going to sleep." He said, dropping his head on his desk and quickly finding himself asleep right before class even began in earnest, getting sweatdrops from everyone that knew him.

XxX

(Meanwhile – Naruto's Base)

Yoruichi sat in the room provided to Soi-Fon for the duration of her stay, kicking her legs off of the edge of the bed with a knowing grin on her face, "So how was your night?" She saw Soi-Fon stiffen, who had been preparing to head back to the Soul Society later with her current mission complete, "Did you enjoy yourself?" If Soi-Fon hadn't she had at least managed to exhaust herself since earlier that morning she didn't stir during Yoruichi and Naruto's activities, "Don't try the ignorant thing. I know Naruto took you out last night."

Soi-Fon sighed and turned towards her mentor, "Fine Yoruichi-sama, yes. Uzumaki took me out last night and no it wasn't terrible." She then grumbled a further response, "Why does it matter anyway?"

"Because you like him, that's why." Yoruichi said, inspecting her nails and missing the slack-jawed look from the Shinigami captain, "He knows you do too. Kind of like with me. He made me show him before he really tried anything."

"I don't like Uzumaki." Soi-Fon insisted, "I hate that person. How in the world could you say that I feel anything for him?"

Yoruichi's eyes raised back up, full of mirth as she explained her reasoning, "Because he actually treats you like a woman, even though you act like you don't want him to. You know you love the fact that he wants to spend time with you." Yoruichi hopped off of the bed and grabbed Soi-Fon by her chin to look into her eyes, "It's all over your face. Don't lie to me, hate is the very last thing you feel for him."

"Why are you trying to be so insistent about this Yoruichi-sama?" Soi-Fon asked her, turning her eyes away.

Yoruichi frowned and let go of Soi-Fon's chin, "Because I don't like hearing you lie to me and yourself like that." She walked towards the door stretching her arms out, "The sooner you admit to yourself that you wouldn't mind hooking up with Naruto the easier it will be." Smirking back at Soi-Fon she shut the door and left her alone in her room once more.

Soi-Fon huffed and sat down on the bed, taking a break from preparing to leave to lay herself down for a bit, "Why is Yoruichi-sama trying to tease me about Uzumaki? It's ridiculous. Uzumaki makes me sick." She then let out a sigh and shut her eyes, smashing the back of her head once on the bed and frowning.

XxX

(Karakura High School)

Naruto and Gaara went to the roof of the school once the end of the day rolled around and before long they were met there by Ichigo, Orihime, Uryuu, Chad, and Tatsuki whom had informed the others of her new involvement in spiritual affairs. Once they got to the roof, Naruto looked over at Tatsuki, "Tatsuki-chan the first day of training is today right after this, is that good with you?" Tatsuki stiffened at suddenly being put on the spot but nodded, "Good. Make sure you eventually get the hand-seals I taught you on the first day down. Don't wind up with stupid hands like I had when I first started having to use them. The sooner you can flow with them without thinking the better."

Ichigo looked confused at the conversation going on between Naruto and Tatsuki. How the hell did they even meet up to talk to each other in the first place, and now she's training with him? "Alright Naruto what's going on, why are you here?"

Naruto turned towards him and walked over to the gate surrounding the edge of the roof, leaning against it next to Gaara, "Trust me, I don't want to be here, but too many people have given me reasons to." He tilted his head towards his fellow shinobi friend, "First of all I have to watch out for him and make sure he understands how everything works in this world." Naruto then smirked, "He's a friend from my childhood among other things, and he's a partner of mine as of today."

"How?" Chad asked, knowing what he knew of Naruto.

"Long story." Gaara said plainly before reverting to silence.

Naruto grinned and pointed his thumb at him, "Isn't he a talkative fella?" The good humor on Naruto's face then dropped, "Look Boy-wonder, I'm here to say that things are about to get very scary around here for you very soon. I can help you get ready for what's to come, but you have to trust me. Do you trust me?" He asked.

Ichigo recoiled and blinked as he took a moment to think, 'Do I trust Naruto? He's weird… as hell. The weirdest guy I've ever met, period, and weirder than Geta-boushi, and he's strong as hell too. But he did help us save Rukia, and Yoruichi and even Urahara seem to trust him, so why shouldn't I?' Still, he just couldn't bring himself to do so. He couldn't think of a single logical reason to mistrust Naruto, but there was just something about him that he couldn't get past, "Thanks, but no thanks. I don't think I need the help."

Gaara raised a non-existent eyebrow while Naruto's lips twisted into a sneer, "Are you kidding me? Kid if I didn't think you needed the help I wouldn't have even brought it up. If you still don't trust me then at least be man enough to say so instead of trying to hide behind some bullshit bravado. Do you really think you don't need the help to get ready for what's about to come?" He gestured towards himself as he placed a hand on Gaara, "Come here and put your hand on my shoulder and see if you still say that. All of you."

Orihime was the first to quickly walk over and place her hand on Naruto's shoulder, giving him a bright smile to show him that she trusted him even if Ichigo was skeptical. He had given none of them a reason to doubt anything he had said thus far. This was the reasoning that Chad and Uryuu came to as they did the same. Tatsuki figured that she had to trust the person that was going to teach her and Orihime trusted him so she did as well, placing her hand on his shoulder with the others.

"Why do you want us to do that?" Ichigo asked, still keeping his distance.

Naruto gave him a deadpan look, "A demonstration, now get over here with the others before I make you. You can't grab that badge of yours fast enough to keep me from grabbing you first I guarantee it." He said, taking his hand off of Gaara and pointing it at Ichigo, "Banshou Ten-."

"Okay, okay!" Ichigo said, walking over reluctantly. It was either walk over or let Naruto drag him over with his freaky powers. Once he got close, Ichigo stared at his own hand for a moment, contemplating what this could all be about. Maybe he'd teleport them all thousands of miles away or something like that?

Tatsuki eventually got tired of Ichigo's timidity and grabbed him by the wrist, forcing him to put his hand on Naruto's shoulder like everyone else and putting a smirk on the blonde immortal's face as the Rinnegan flickered in his eyes for a moment, allowing him to surround the hand he had on Gaara with black chakra as he actually made full physical contact with Gaara's soul.

And just like that a sudden rush of Reiatsu brought everyone attached to Naruto to their knees. Gaara merely blinked and looked over at Naruto who was grinning madly, "Was that really necessary Naruto?" He asked his friend.

"I'd like to think it was." He responded before looking over at the others who had varying degrees of reaction to what they had just felt. Chad had stumbled back and was using the gate around the roof to keep himself up, Uryuu had clutched his chest tightly and was shaking, Orihime and Tatsuki had actually hit their knees from it, and Ichigo just stared at Naruto with a thin sheen of sweat on his face, "You guys feel that?" He asked sarcastically.

Ichigo wiped his forehead, "What was that?"

"That?" Naruto pointed over at Gaara, "That was him. That was all him." That wasn't all Gaara. What Naruto had done was merely expose them to Gaara's Reiatsu by using his own as a medium… but that also involved combining a flare-up of his with Gaara's so it wasn't really fair, still he got his point across, or at least he was going to, "Aizen's got a whole army of fighters just like Gaara here, because he's not really human, he's a special kind of Hollow."

Uryuu adjusted his glasses on his face and tried to regain his composure, "He's a what? I can't sense anything from him at all out of the ordinary. How is he a Hollow?"

Naruto leaned on Gaara's shoulder with his elbow, "Because I had Urahara put Gaara in a Gigai that hid his crushingly massive Reiatsu from people so he wouldn't set off a beacon to every spiritually aware person in fifty miles of Karakura Town. And don't get any ideas of trying to kill him either, because not only would you lose, but after you lost I would kick the shit out of you myself."

Gaara raised an eyebrow at Naruto's bluffing declaration. Gaara could easily sense that he could beat everyone there with the exception of perhaps Ichigo. He was strong on his own but Gaara could probably defeat him, however inside of him Gaara could sense something akin to his own power just lurking, 'How can a Shinigami have an aura of a Hollow within?'

Naruto stood on his own, "Do you get my point? Do you really think you don't need the help? If you can honestly tell me that you think you could fight an army of guys with that kind of strength as you are now then you must be as dumb as I look."

"Are you serious?" Chad said, behind his bangs his eyes were visibly widened at the disturbing statement that Naruto had just shared with them. What he had just felt was more than comparable with the power of the captain that had beaten him so effortlessly, "An army?"

Naruto nodded, "I've seen parts of it." He started walking around the roof around everyone, "And this is no joke. If you all want to fight then you're going to need help, my and Yoruichi-chan's and maybe Urahara's help… again. But if you all want to be like Ichigo then you can just stay out of the way, because you'll just end up dead, and that would be a shame because I like all of you." He looked over at Tatsuki and extended his hand to help her up, "It's time to go. Are you sure you still want to do this? Once we start we aren't going to stop."

Tatsuki nodded in a determined manner, "I'm not backing down from this. There isn't anything you can throw at me that would make me run away."

"We'll see about that." Naruto said before jumping and standing on the top of the fence surrounding the roof, "You know where to go, I want you there in one hour so we can get started. All of you guys are welcome too if you want to go with her. Just make sure that you don't get in the way. Let's go home Gaara." He said before jumping back off of the roof.

Gaara sighed at his impulsive friend, "And this is the man that's supposed to be my boss now?" He said in his usual monotone before looking over at the others, "It was nice to meet all of you. I hope you sincerely think about listening to what Naruto said though." Gaara made a hand-seal and disappeared in a wave of sand that seemed to come from nowhere to hide his departure.

Tatsuki looked at where Naruto had just been and then where Gaara had been and blinked in surprise, "So this Gaara is a ninja like Naruto-sensei?" She smirked and then began heading off towards Naruto's base.

Orihime looked at her closest friend as she made her way back down the stairs to leave the school and followed behind. Ichigo noticed them leaving and called out to them, "Wait. Where are you guys going now?"

Tatsuki turned to Ichigo with a grin and held her fist out, "Duh, I'm going to go train with Naruto so that I can actually get some use out of seeing these ghosts and things. If he's offering then why wouldn't I?"

Orihime cheerfully spoke up next, "And I'm going with her!"

Chad shrugged his shoulder and began walking after them, "I guess I'll go too." Uryuu didn't say a word, he just followed along with the large teenage boy as they followed Tatsuki and Orihime to the site Naruto had instructed her to get to.

"This is crazy…" Ichigo muttered as he found himself alone on the roof, "How can they just trust him like that? And why can't I?" It was seriously irking the young Shinigami. There were three people; Yoruichi, Urahara, and Naruto. All three of them had overseen some aspect of his training in the past and of the three of them he only trusted two. Naruto had fought the overall leader of the Gotei 13 because of Ichigo wanting to free Rukia and had saved his life from Aizen, still he couldn't put his trust into him, "Gah! I need to go see Geta-boushi… maybe he has something to say about this." He said to no one as he finally left the roof himself.

XxX

Standing above the roof of the school on nothing but air, Shinji and Hiyori had been watching the entire exchange between Naruto and Ichigo, and the diminutive female of the pair sneered at what she had seen, "What was Uzumaki's dumbass doing? He didn't even bring the Ichigo kid's powers up."

"Just give it some time." Shinji replied carelessly, "Let Naruto work out his plan. He said the kid was hard-headed and he was right. If he didn't listen to Naruto over training with him here then what kind of chance would one of us have in getting him to train with us?"

Hiyori huffed and crossed her arms, "I would have just knocked the idiot out and dragged him back to the warehouse."

Shinji smirked, "And that is why you fail." A sandal then slapped him across the back of the head, "That too."

XxX

(Naruto's Base)

Down in the training area of the facility, Naruto and Gaara stood with Yoruichi as the Shinigami that had come for their mission were about to return home. "Time to go so soon?" Naruto asked Soi-Fon as she held a Jigokuchou (Hell Butterfly) in her hand.

"We have to return and report on what we've seen Uzumaki." Soi-Fon said, turning to allow the butterfly to fly over to Omaeda, "Open the Senkaimon Omaeda." She returned her attention to Naruto, "I will have to tell Yamamoto-Soutachou about your Arrancar allies…"

"It's okay." Naruto said, putting off any tension that this may have brought up, if Soi-Fon cared or not and his bet was on the latter, "Yamamoto-jiji said I could make my own damn squad and if he has a problem with it he can direct his concerns to the nearest brick wall since a brick wall would care just as much as I would. I need battle-ready fighters here and they don't come much more battle-ready than Hidan and Gaara."

Speaking of Hidan, he had wondered where everyone was and found his way down to the training area since there was always someone down there. Right before he was about to boisterously make his presence known he locked eyes with Gaara who stared back at him impassively. The two simply looked at each other for a moment before Hidan tilted his head up, "S'up?"

Gaara nodded to him and that was that. Naruto gave them both a dry look, honestly expecting some kind of fireworks between them and admitting that the lack of them left him slightly disappointed, but then again Gaara never had to fight Hidan or deal with anyone he killed and Hidan had never particularly cared about capturing jinchuuriki back in the day so it wasn't that farfetched.

Soi-Fon had to at least agree that if Naruto was going to keep going into Hueco Mundo then he needed strong people with him. That was a given. What, was he going to just wage a one man guerilla war against Aizen, two other ex-captain Shinigami, and whatever else the man had up his sleeve along with an entire plane of Hollows of all shapes and sizes? Then she really would have considered him an insane idiot, "We'll be in touch."

By this time the other-worldly gates that formed the Senkaimon had been opened for them to return home. Yoruichi waved to her former student, "Sooner than you think Soi-Fon. We can go to the Soul Society anytime we want, remember? Naruto can give you a follow-up of last night anytime you want."

Soi-Fon just narrowed her eyes at Naruto, forcing the blonde to give Yoruichi an incredulous look as if to ask her why she would have brought that up. Luckily Omaeda was smart enough to not openly voice his own curiosity at what had just been said, having been kicked by his captain in the past for other bouts of stupidity less personal than this seemed.

Luckily, Nemu managed to divert the awkwardness away towards herself, "I was unable to gain a reproductive sample this time Uzumaki-san. Perhaps the next meeting when there is more time." Naruto looked at Nemu with a deadpan expression as Gaara looked at him curiously and Hidan began to laugh uproariously.

"So not appropriate Nemu-chan." Naruto said before she shrugged and walked through the portal, followed by Omaeda. Naruto then grinned at Soi-Fon, "Can I have a goodbye hug Jooubachi?"

"Sure." She said unexpectedly, getting Naruto to brighten up and walk towards her with his arms outstretched, "If by 'goodbye' you mean 'goodbye', and by 'hug' you mean 'stab repeatedly in the kidney'." That stopped him right where he stood.

Naruto let his arms drop, "It just so happens that I did in fact _not_ mean that." Soi-Fon smirked at him having his bubble burst, "So no hug?" She shook her head, "Damn."

Soi-Fon turned towards the Senkaimon and began walking towards it planning on leaving, "Tough luck Uzumaki." She said before she found herself picked up from behind with arms wrapped around her.

"Tough luck this!" Naruto said happily as he stole a hug, "It wasn't an offer, I was going to get my hug one way or another." He then found himself thrown twenty feet away as a result of an elbow to the head, "I forgot that you were way stronger without the Gigai." He said from his back with a bruise growing on his forehead.

Soi-Fon had her back still turned to the rest of them to hide the red on her face, "I swear, you make me sick Uzumaki."

"Love you too Jooubachi." Naruto said, groaning as he poked his angry red bruise.

With that, Soi-Fon walked through the portal as it closed behind her and reverted back to nothing, leaving the remainder of Naruto's currently recruited team there by themselves. As Naruto picked himself up off of the ground and dusted himself off, the trio of Arrancar that had somehow accompanied him back after the last trip to Hueco Mundo came out of hiding. The skinny male one, Pesche, spoke up, "Is the angry lady Shinigami gone?"

Yoruichi looked around before realizing that they were talking about Soi-Fon and nodded, "Yes, now I want to know why you all followed Naruto back to this world."

The large one, Dondochakka answered her, "We were all standing around in the place where all those Shinigami and the blonde guy killed Aizen-sama's men. There's no way we were going to stick around there and be punished for that. Lesser of two evils don'tcha know?"

"Fine." Naruto said, making a hand-seal, "No sweat, I'll just send you guys back and-."

"No!" All three of them shouted, "We don' wanna go back." The little girl Arrancar Nel Tu said, "Can we stay here for a while?"

Naruto wanted to say no, but it was a little girl. How could he make a little girl, even an Arrancar little girl, go back to Hueco Mundo? Someone would have had to have ice water in their veins to make her go back there, even with her weird companions, "Okay. But you guys have got to stay under the radar. It's one thing bringing back Gaara on a whim, because with him I can explain why I did it and he's my buddy, but you guys are different."

"You won't even know we were here!" Pesche said before running up to Naruto and patting him on the back, "Say, you're not that bad after all. At first I thought you were going to kill us all in a painful way and then turn us into trophies of your victory, but boy did you ever prove me wrong."

Naruto's eye twitched as he looked at the Arrancar, "There's a little girl not twenty feet from me and you're saying this stuff. That would make it kind of hard to get her to trust me wouldn't it?" He said before looking over at the little girl who was smiling at him good-naturedly.

"Nel isn't scared of you." Nel admitted with a shake of her head, "Not even a bit."

Dondochakka then picked her up, "And that's that. If our Nel likes you then that's good enough for us, so our lives are in your hands Mr. Not-A-Shinigami."

"But no pressure though." Pesche added as an afterthought.

"Obviously." Naruto said before sighing and waving them off, "Just go upstairs for right now would you? Gaara will show you." And with that, Gaara led the other three Arrancar upstairs leaving Hidan and Yoruichi with Naruto.

Hidan watched them leave and then addressed Naruto, "So what are you going to do to help the sand-kid get out of his Gigai?"

Naruto then palmed his forehead, "Shit I need to do something about that don't I? But I can't just take Gaara all over the place right after getting him into school even though leaving without him would piss him off." Naruto smirked, "Heh, that's just a bonus. But yeah, Hidan you and I are going to be leaving to go raid another one of my hiding spots to grab something for Gaara so that he has something cool to eject from his Gigai, like a welcoming present for the team from the guys that used to be shinobi."

"Naruto-sensei!" Naruto turned towards the entrance to the basement to find Tatsuki running towards them dressed for training. She had her hands wrapped in tape and wore a pair of black shorts with a white tank top to go with black athletic shoes, "I'm ready."

"I can see that." Naruto said with a smile on his face as he also noticed Chad, Uryuu, and Orihime follow after her shortly thereafter. He knew they would come, and he also figured that Ichigo wouldn't… stupid brat, "So how do you all like my base of operations?"

Uryuu looked around and noticed that it was quite similar to the room underneath Urahara's shop, "What kind of operations do you do?" He asked.

Naruto looked over at him and blinked, "Um… what kind of operations don't we do?" He began listing things off on his fingers, "Freelance Hollow extermination, Yoruichi-chan can perform the Konsou, and we'll take almost any job if the money is good and it doesn't go against our morals… because that's what shinobi do."

Hidan snorted, "What morals?"

Naruto rolled his eyes at the silver-haired Arrancar and looked back over at their visitors, "So you guys can go somewhere and train yourselves, or you can hang out and watch me train Tatsuki-chan."

"Good luck Tatsuki-chan!" Orihime said exuberantly for her friend.

Naruto stood in front of Tatsuki and crossed his arms as everyone else cleared the area, "Okay first of all show me the hand-seals. Tori (Bird), I (Boar), Inu (Dog), Tatsu (Dragon), Ushi (Ox), Tora (Tiger), Mi (Snake), Ne (Rat), Uma (Horse), Saru (Monkey), U (Hare), Hitsuji (Ram)." Tatsuki went through all of the hand-seals Naruto instructed her to show and stopped on the last one, the ram seal, with a nervous look on her face, hoping she didn't get them all mixed up. Naruto nodded at her performance, happy that she was able to remember all 12, but honestly it wasn't rocket science… if only someone had told him that when he was eight years old, "Now show me some flair."

"What?" She asked him in reply, not really getting what he was talking about as her hands fell from the ram seal.

Naruto sighed, he thought what he said was cool, but she didn't know what the hell he was talking about. Maybe that one wouldn't catch on after all? He grabbed her hands and put them back into the ram seal, "Just… fire up your chakra for me so I can see you do it firsthand."

Tatsuki did as instructed and channeled her chakra through her entire body. Uryuu studied her intently as due to the loss of his powers he couldn't really train, thus he sat on the sidelines with Orihime and the docile Chad and watched, "So this is the power that Naruto uses? He could sense that Tatsuki had it, that's why he's training her?"

Naruto gave her the signal to kill the power so to speak and she dropped the hand-seal, "Okay, now when I learned all of this there were tons of other things that went into my education. Physical conditioning; you sure as hell don't need that." Tatsuki grinned and flexed in a taunting manner as Naruto continued, "Overall world knowledge; you're a damn high school student at this point and anything you actually need to know Yoruichi-chan would be better suited towards teaching you than me. The ability to focus intently on your inner power… I don't know how you'll do with that or how good you are at it, but we'll see."

Tatsuki was liking the way this sounded more and more. Less talking, more teaching her to fight. That's what she liked.

"You're fast for a regular person. Way faster than a regular person. It won't take much at all to get you to where I need you for that." Naruto said, liking the fact that training Tatsuki was going to probably be pretty low-maintenance, "You're strong as hell. But I wonder how tough you are." She blinked at that, "I'm going to teach you a few things and then I'm going to give you a test. And you are going to hate my guts after the test."

"Let's get started then!" Tatsuki said, jabbing at the air, all revved up, "Come on, what's first?"

Naruto shrugged, "That's up to you in this case. Do you want to know how to throw weapons?" Tatsuki frowned and shook her head, "Like the hands-on approach huh? Well that's okay. I don't need to teach you taijutsu so that's out… and I guess I'll have to get you something to use to make up for that." He scratched his head, the curriculum he had to go through as a kid was making sense to him now. It was all to set up him learning the basic ninjutsu he ended up practicing in his final graduation years. Now that he didn't have to teach Tatsuki that stuff it was far easier, "Okay time to put those hand-seals to good use. First jutsu you're going to learn is Kawarimi no Jutsu (Substitution Jutsu), because you can't fight if someone cleaves you in half so you'd better learn how to dodge."

Tatsuki cringed, but nodded, realizing that he wasn't even joking about that, 'It's okay… I'll be fine.' Poor girl didn't know what she had gotten herself into.

XxX

(Urahara Shop – With Ichigo)

"I just don't get it you know?" Ichigo griped, walking around in a circle while Urahara sat at his table watching him in amusement.

'This is great. Ichigo's going insane and I don't even have to do any personal work to drive the kid nuts.' Urahara thought before Ichigo continued his rant as it was clear he only wanted someone to vent on more or less.

"Is it me?" Ichigo asked, pointing at himself in an animated fashion, "I mean, there really isn't any reason for me not to like Naruto. Am I just an asshole?"

"Maybe…" Urahara said in a theorizing fashion, "Maybe you have a latent crush on Yoruichi. Yeah, and Naruto sleeping with her pissed you off." He finished, basically counting down in his head before the explosion would be forthcoming.

"I don't have a crush on Yoruichi!" Ichigo shouted at him before thinking about the other part of that statement, "Wait, I didn't even know they slept together! Why would I want to know that? How would I have even known that in the first place?"

Urahara started waving his fan in front of his face, "He didn't tell you when he saw you again? That's weird because if it was me I'd have told everyone I knew after it happened. Hell I probably would have told people that I _didn't_ know." He noticed Ichigo's anger rising, "Don't worry Ichigo, other than Tessai you'd have been the first to know."

"I wouldn't want to you creepy bastard!" Ichigo shouted. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea, but who else would he be able to talk to about this? Beggars couldn't be choosers in this case, "Can we get back on topic here?"

Urahara nodded, having had enough of using Yoruichi's being overtly sexy to tease Ichigo. That was amateur hour, a real professional could tease someone with their own insecurities, and if he was good enough he would be able to make Ichigo see how stupid he was being by not trusting Naruto, "Well why don't you just fight him?"

Ichigo stopped in his tracks and stared at Urahara, "What did you just say?"

'Got him.' Urahara thought before continuing to speak, "Yeah, just go and fight him. Think about it, when you fight people you find out more than you ever would have if you just asked them about it, so if there was really something you didn't know that rubbed you the wrong way about Naruto you'd think about it while you were fighting and you could ask him about it then." Inwardly Urahara was laughing, 'Man that sounded absolutely asinine, it's so perfect.' He was just waiting on Ichigo to tell him how stupid that sounded.

However, in the mind of Ichigo he realized something different, that Urahara was 100% absolutely correct. Every single question that Ichigo had ever needed to have answered; how his mother actually died, why Uryuu was so intent on beating Shinigami, how to get his Zanpakutou back, why Renji wanted to fight him so badly, why Byakuya was so intent on not trying to help Rukia… everything. Every single question he ever had recently was being answered while he was in the middle of a goddamned fight.

With this in mind, Ichigo robotically turned and left Urahara's house, leaving one confused scientist behind, "Oh shit… he didn't take that seriously did he?" He asked no one in particular, "Nah, Ichigo's a smart kid. There's no way he took that literally."

XxX

(Four Days Later – Karakura High School)

Tatsuki glared at Naruto as she and Orihime walked with him and Gaara to the base, "I hate you Naruto-sensei." Orihime had been more than welcome at the base over the last few days as Tatsuki did her damndest to learn Naruto's Kawarimi, which he made her practice once she got the process down… by throwing rocks at her. Rocks of all shapes and sizes, with results varying.

Naruto walked with his hands in his pockets as he ignored the angry glare from his student, "You need to learn."

"How to get hit by rocks?" Tatsuki asked, gritting her teeth.

"Well that doesn't hurt." He said with a chuckle, "Actually it does, but that's not the point. The point is how to _dodge_ the rocks. Dodging with Kawarimi will save your ass when you need it. I'm drilling that into your head. At your level basics will kill. Either you or your opponent." He then pointed at Orihime, "And since our resident sweetheart here is always there with us we can kill two birds with one stone and have her practice healing people when I fuck you up."

Tatsuki would have tried to hit him right then if she hadn't just seen him hurl a boulder three times his size at her not even twenty-four hours ago. The chances of her walking away from an unprovoked assault were slim and none as far as she could see. Too bad she didn't know that Naruto was genetically dispositioned to letting girls lay into him.

"Anyway you're doing great. The test is today, but I won't be the one giving it to you. Gaara is." Naruto informed her, pointing at the red-head in question, "I have to go somewhere for a bit. I have to go grab an artifact for you to use when you get better, and I have to get something for Gaara too. I should be back Tuesday if Hidan doesn't make me drag ass and slow me down."

Gaara cut in to inform Tatsuki of her schedule, "Test today, rest during the weekend." He said. As she opened her mouth to say she could keep training with them over the weekend, Gaara cut in again, "You're really not going to be able to train after this test. At least you won't want to train." He turned towards Naruto, "Why am I doing this again?"

Naruto rolled his eyes, "Because it's your goddamn job. I'm paying you aren't I?" He looked at a watch on his wrist and frowned, "It's time for me to get going. I'll see you guys when I get back. Don't blow up the base." He looked around and saw no one watching before he ran up the side of a building to take to the rooftops.

Tatsuki watched him do that and went wide-eyed, "When am I going to learn how to do that?"

"After you pass the first test." Gaara said, "Naruto also left me and instructed me to teach you an actual ninjutsu for combat once you pass, if you can pass before he returns that is."

Orihime looked between Tatsuki and Gaara, "So what's the test?"

Gaara looked at her and both girls could swear that a smirk formed on his face for just a moment, "You'll see once we begin."

XxX

On a hill overlooking Karakura Town Hidan leaned against a rental car when he felt a familiar presence and glowered as Naruto appeared in a swirl of leaves, "I got the scrolls you sealed and the rental car you ass. You want anything else? Want me to shine your shoes? Maybe clean out your stable?"

Naruto ignored him and hopped in the front seat, "Well if I did I could make you because I'm your boss and I fucking pay you. Now did you get the tickets?" Hidan flashed a pair of plane tickets from his pocket as he got into the passenger's seat, "Beautiful."

"Let's just go." Hidan grumbled, "I'm fucking dreading this trip. The climate is going to absolutely suck."

Naruto rolled his eyes as he took the keys from Hidan, "Sorry princess, but it's going to be a goddamn desert. Why would I hide stuff in hospitable climates and places easy to reach? Use your head."

"Naruto!"

Naruto turned his head and saw Ichigo standing behind him in his Shinigami garb. Raising an eyebrow at seeing Ichigo all the way out there in his Shingami form, Naruto spoke, "What's up Wonder-boy, you need some help or something?"

"I want to fight you." Ichigo said with determination in his voice, "Right now, before you go. I have some questions that you can answer and this is the only way."

Naruto and Hidan looked at each other before Hidan shrugged, not really having much of an opinion on the matter. Naruto handed the car keys back to Hidan and got out of the car, "Are you sure? I mean you could just ask me whatever you want to know. There's not much to hide."

Ichigo shook his head with a frown, "I don't know why, but I can't trust you. Maybe if I fight you, I don't know, maybe I'll find out why and I can get over it or something."

Naruto slammed the door to the car and walked away from it, he was still dressed in his uniform from school but he didn't care about that right then, "Well… if you think you need to. I didn't want to fight you yet though Ichigo, you're not going to like it."

Ichigo took that as Naruto saying he was weak, however that wasn't what Naruto was implying at all about a battle between the two of them, "Just do it so we can get this over with." Ichigo was ready to move on with matters, he was sick of obsessing over this. If what Naruto told him really was true he would have needed to get himself in gear and prepare for what Aizen had in store.

Naruto nodded and looked around before motioning to Ichigo to follow him, activating Swift Release as Ichigo used Shunpo to follow him. Hidan just sat in the car and drummed his fingers on the dashboard, "This better not take all day, the flight's at six."

XxX

At the top of a field on a grassy hill, Naruto stood across from Ichigo with his arms crossed, and he didn't even have the Raijin no Ken with him. He left it with his luggage that Hidan had. It didn't matter though, it was more of a luxury than anything. He didn't need it for this. Ichigo just needed to clear his head and he was kind of like him in this respect, a fight helped with that, Naruto could respect that.

"Well?" Naruto said as he could see the sun begin to wane in the distance, "You were the one that called me out so let's go already."

Ichigo frowned as he pulled his Zanpakutou from his back, "I'm waiting for you to draw a weapon to fight me with. Aren't you going to use one of those kunai things or something?" He asked, not feeling right about attacking an unarmed opponent.

Naruto dropped his arms from across his chest and shook his head, "If I needed a weapon I'd be using a weapon Ichigo." Naruto vanished from Ichigo's sight and the boy turned around on pure instinct to block a kick with the width of his sword, "Don't show an opponent that thinks they know otherwise mercy because there's probably a reason they think so."

Ichigo narrowed his eyes at Naruto, "I'll keep that in mind." He said before pulling his sword back and taking a swing at Naruto who simply jumped back out of the way. His inhibitions at attacking an unarmed man now gone at Naruto's insistence, Ichigo attempted to follow up, hot on Naruto's heels as the shinobi backstepped away from him.

From the sleeve of Naruto's shirt, a kunai ejected itself into his hand just as Ichigo finally closed the distance on him and slashed horizontally. Naruto blocked the attack and saw the surprise in Ichigo's eyes at Naruto having a blade hidden on him, "On second thought, having a weapon might keep me from getting all cut up and having to explain to people at the airport in the next few towns over why I'm all bloody."

Naruto's small but dense blade was able to keep Ichigo's massive weapon from reaching his body as the two struggled against each other. Ichigo's monstrous strength helped him go head-to-head with Zaraki Kenpachi, and yet Naruto was able to keep him back with nothing more than a sign of struggling on his face.

The two forced each other away and Naruto stepped back in, taking slashes at Ichigo with his small black knife that Ichigo managed to block with his Zanpakutou. Naruto jumped back and held his weapon up in case Ichigo just flat-out rushed him, "Do you feel any better yet?" He asked.

Ichigo blinked in confusion of Naruto just stopping the battle to ask him if he was over his issue yet, "No." He answered honestly.

Naruto shut his eyes and shrugged, "Alright then." Naruto's Reiatsu spiked and he thrust one hand out at Ichigo, opening his eyes to reveal the Rinnegan to him, "Shinra Tensei (Heavenly Subjugation of the Omnipresent God)!" Ichigo's body was violently forced away from Naruto, "Then that just means that we're not fighting hard enough yet!"

Ichigo rolled through and recovered, 'Gah, that felt like he punched me right in the chest as hard as he could.' He thought to himself as he came at Naruto again, intent on finding the answer to his unknown question, "If that's what you want then you've got it!"

'Kid can take a hit, that's for damn sure.' Naruto thought as he jumped out of the way of Ichigo's responsive attack, taking to the air as he stood in the skies. Ichigo showed that he had at least been honing his skills with his Hohou by heading up as well to meet Naruto mid-air, "Well if you're still game, take this! Fuuton: Renkuudan (Wind Release: Drilling Air Bullet)!" Naruto fired off a compressed ball of wind from his mouth, rapid-fire with not much build-up to it.

Despite the speed of the attack, Ichigo was able to utilize his Shunpo to avoid the attack, letting it crash into the ground below. Ichigo appeared behind Naruto with his sword already drawn back for an attack. He stood too close however, and Naruto was able to grab his wrist tightly, stopping his from making his swing. Naruto delivered a punishing side kick to Ichigo's stomach and whirled around to throw him away before quickly conjuring up another Fuuton: Renkuudan (Wind Release: Drilling Air Bullet) and firing it at Ichigo while he was still prone and flying through the air.

Ichigo righted himself in the air and gasped as he saw the rippling ball of air hurtling through the sky at him. Ichigo drew his sword back and released a crescent energy blast from the tip of his sword, meeting Naruto's attack in the air and exploding on contact. Through the smoke from the explosion, Naruto flew through it with his right arm drawn back, a blue orb of energy in it. Ichigo held up his sword and heard the grinding noise of Naruto's Rasengan smashing against his blade.

After a moment, the energy behind Naruto's jutsu sent Ichigo flying back through the air again. Ichigo grit his teeth at being repelled back twice in one battle thus far and missed a second figure flying from the cloud of smoke that Naruto had originally come out of. It got the drop on Ichigo by attacking from above, and Ichigo almost didn't react to it in time, preparing to cut right through the Naruto above him.

"Bunshin Daibakuha (Clone Great Explosion)!"

The Naruto Ichigo had planned on attacking smirked devilishly before lighting up and exploding right before Ichigo managed to touch him, sending Ichigo's body falling from the sky to hit the ground. Naruto stood in the air, watching Ichigo's motionless body on the ground, 'He isn't done yet. That hurt, but he isn't done by a long shot. What's the kid thinking?'

Covered in scuffs, burns, and a few bloody spots, Ichigo just stared up into the sky at Naruto, laying there on his back, 'That's why. That's why I can't trust you; because you don't fight straightforward. Nothing you do in a fight is head-on. You make it seem like you're going to, but it's just a feint. It's always a feint, always something that makes people look the other way while you do something else.' He shut his eyes as he stood back up, 'If that's how you are in battle when a person's true nature is supposed to be shown then… yeah… that's why I can't trust you Naruto. Not until I'm given a true reason to. I'm sorry. You could really be a nice guy, but my gut is telling me to be wary of you and the way that you fight isn't proving my gut wrong.'

Naruto noticed Ichigo staring up at him blankly and he returned the stare, neither man moving an inch until Ichigo's Reiatsu began to heighten, "Here we go."

"Bankai." Ichigo's appearance changed to that of one long black coat and his Zanpakutou changed to its thin jet-black form, "Tensa Zangetsu (Heaven Chain Slaying Moon)."

Naruto nodded and he allowed himself to enter Sage Mode with the chakra he had gathered while Ichigo had been on the ground staring, with the orange pigment around his eyes signifying his use of the technique, "Let's see what you've got Wonder-boy." Naruto said right before he and Ichigo vanished from sight.

Naruto suddenly appeared, delivering a kick that seemed to slice through Ichigo's body, however this Naruto just narrowed his eyes before being cut clean through, disappearing in a puff of smoke, "Another clone…." Ichigo muttered.

"Afterimage…" Naruto said, speaking of when his clone thought it had kicked Ichigo, "Okay, you've got some moves. You're a really quick study. But-." Naruto said holding his hand out towards Ichigo in a tiger seal with the back of his hand facing Ichigo. He smirked and made a come hither motion with his two extended fingers, "Banshou Ten'in (Heavenly Attraction of All of Creation)!"

Ichigo found himself jerked off of his feet towards Naruto. Trying to dig his feet in to keep from being drawn forward towards what seemed to be the center of a void, Naruto himself. Ichigo stabbed his Zanpakutou into the ground in front of him to keep from sliding anymore as he saw Naruto now focusing with his full hand to pull Ichigo in. Ichigo's sword began cracking the ground, 'So not good! This is my only real anchor, if this gives way then I'm going to fly right towards him!' His eyes then widened, 'Wait, everything's going to fly right towards him!'

Ichigo jumped backwards as hard as he could pulling his sword from the ground and buying himself a tenth of a second before he was sucked forward, but that was all the time he needed for his plan. Ichigo quickly swung his sword and released another crescent blast of energy at Naruto.

Naruto's focus with his jutsu sucking in everything that had to do with Ichigo also drew in his attack that flew at Naruto double time. By the time Naruto released the jutsu, the attack was too fast for him to dodge on a dime without taking an unprotected hit and he crossed his arms over his chest and face to shield them as the attack hit home.

"Finally got him!" Ichigo shouted excitedly as the attack exploded on Naruto.

"**You know damn well you didn't kill him with that."** Ichigo heard in his head, **"I'd be surprised if he even had a decent wound on him anywhere from that one, I doubt he's even bleeding at all!"** It taunted in a sadistic fashion.

"Whew." Ichigo heard from the aftermath of his attack, "That one was pretty good Ichigo." The smoke cleared to reveal Naruto still standing there in thoroughly ruined school clothes. He reached for a shallow cut that had formed on his chest that was already healing steadily, "You cut me in Sage Mode, that's really good."

"**Told you!"** The sinister voice in Ichigo's head said before cackling evilly, **"You just don't have what it takes to beat a guy like that. You saw his eyes when you two were up close, that guy's a killer, a true warrior! If he was serious with you he'd crush you and chew you right up, you should let me take over."**

'No! Now shut up and leave me alone. I can fight Naruto all on my own.' Ichigo asserted as he noticed Naruto giving him a strange look, probably due to his seeming hesitation to continue the fight, "Here goes Naruto, I hope you're ready!" Ichigo said, getting his attention back on the fight as he launched at Naruto again.

"**Oh well, it's your funeral!"** The voice in Ichigo's head cackled again derisively.

Naruto set himself in a basic taijutsu stance and waited as Ichigo came closer. Naruto shut his eyes, able to easily sense Ichigo's blazing level of power from him in this form, good enough to see him without his eyes. Without warning, Naruto lashed out with a punch once he felt Ichigo get into range. Ichigo saw Naruto miss the hit and thought he had narrowly dodged one that would have probably rung his bell pretty damn good. He thought that until he felt a punch sock him right in the jaw with a tooth-rattling shot, 'He didn't even touch me!'

"Kawazu Kumite (Frog Kata)." Naruto said plainly, shifting around in his stance, "The energy around my body can be like a solid extension of my body that only I can see." He saw Ichigo stop sliding back and stumble around slightly, "You Shinigami really are a tough bunch. That would have put any normal person out." No living human he had actually deemed it necessary to punch while in Sage Mode woke up to tell the tale.

"I'm not really a human like this Naruto." Ichigo said, spitting blood from his mouth, "My body is tough. Really tough."

Naruto nodded, 'Yoruichi-chan said that a Shinigami's life force is their Reiryoku. If that's the case then no wonder he can keep getting up from the stuff I'm doing. I can't keep taking it easy on him if I want to end this.'

"**Ooh, you see that look on his face? He's going to fucking finish you now, just watch!"**

'Shut up!' Ichigo was finding it harder to concentrate on his fight as the voice in his head grew more and more persistent and louder, 'I can beat him!'

"You seem to be the kind of guy that likes to crash into someone and see if you can stand up afterwards." Naruto said, bringing both of his hands together and expanding them to reveal a Rasengan that was covered in white wind blades, "Well I'm kind of a fan of that too. So how about it?" He asked with a smile that showed he was loving this little battle.

Ichigo was going to respond positively when his inner voice chimed in again, **"You can feel the power rolling off of that thing in his hands, you know you want to back down. Just let me take over and I'll cut right through that move!"**

Ichigo grit his teeth to block the voice as he spoke to Naruto, "You've got it Naruto." The two charged directly at each other with Ichigo charging up everything he had in his sword and Naruto doing the same with his attack in his hands.

Naruto shoved his attack out to meet Ichigo's sword, "Fuuton: Rasengan (Wind Release: Spiraling Sphere)!" Ichigo shouted in return as they smashed into each other, clashing in a large explosion of power that forced clouds up high above the ground.

XxX

(With Hidan)

"Fucking Uzumaki…" Hidan said to himself as he saw the cloud of smoke and dust raise from where he knew the two had gone a few minutes ago, "I knew he'd go overboard." Of course due to the fact that he didn't know Naruto's opponent at all he had no idea that Naruto was only partially susceptible to taking the blame on this one, "We are going to be so fucking late… we're going to miss the goddamn flight."

XxX

(Naruto vs. Ichigo)

Naruto stood with scratches all over his body and a tired look on his face as he stood with Ichigo in a crater formed by their clash. He turned his head around once he heard the clang of Ichigo's sword hitting the ground only to see Ichigo still standing up.

Naruto turned his full body around and saw the wounds open on Ichigo. He had clearly taken the worst of it, but the fact that he was still standing and looked able to keep going full-blast was nothing less that impressive, "You work yourself out of whatever you were dealing with Wonder-boy?" He asked, getting no response, "Hey, can you hear me? Did I injure your throat or something? Talk to me here Ichigo."

"**I'm not really Ichigo… sorry."** A distorted voice said, coming from Ichigo's body, **"You could talk to me in his place though."**

Naruto smirked and deactivated his Sage Mode, "I think you'd rather fight me though."

"**Hehehe… You've got that right!"** 'Ichigo' shouted as he turned around and ripped Ichigo's Zanpakutou from the ground to rush Naruto like a bull. On the boy's face was a white mask with red markings going down the face.

"I knew you were in there." Naruto said quietly before his entire body took on a flaming glow, covered in a dark-colored chakra, making him look as if his body was covered in black flames. He shot an arm out that grabbed Ichigo's body and halted the berserk teen in his tracks as he snarled and writhed in the grip. Naruto squeezed and elicited a breathless, strained grunt as he used his other hand to stretch out and grab the mask, peeling it off of Ichigo's face and tossing it aside.

Naruto dropped Ichigo's body to the ground and after a few seconds Ichigo began to stir and get back up, "W-What in the hell was that?"

"That was the Hollow stuck inside of you." Naruto said, his own body turning back to normal as there was no more need to go any further, "You've had it since at least the fight with Kenpachi since I saw that right after Yoruichi brought you to that hideout." He said, pointing at the mask he discarded from Ichigo's face.

Ichigo held his head and his ribs, feeling as if he had just played the part of a walnut stuck in a nutcracker, "That's what that thing was? I thought it was my conscience or something." Naruto let out a chuckle at that, "It definitely didn't feel natural… but what was the power that you just used?"

Naruto pointed at his chest, "You might as well call that _my_ Hollow stuck inside of me. It's the same concept even if it isn't the same thing." Naruto tried to explain, "If you don't get control of it your Hollow is going to try and possess you each time you find yourself in a tough fight. The more of them you get into the stronger its presence gets. I would have told you this sooner, but would you have listened to me?"

Ichigo looked down at the ground in embarrassment, "I probably wouldn't have."

Naruto put a hand on his shoulder, "I'm not out to get you Ichigo. I'm on your side, and I want you to beat this thing. I know people that can help if you'll listen to me."

What did he have to lose at this point? That Hollow just snatched control of his body away from him and tried to kill Naruto. If Naruto wasn't as strong as he was then it might have done just as much if not more damage than it had done to Byakuya during their fight, "Okay." He said, thinking that he owed Naruto something for embarrassingly losing control during the battle, "I'll give it a try."

Naruto grinned at him, "Great. But you're going to hate these guys at first. Still, they're going to help you out. Trust me."

There that went again, 'trust me'. And for once Ichigo didn't see anything wrong with it. Naruto could have just killed him for being the nuisance he was but he didn't, "Alright. Ill trust you just this once." He couldn't keep his eyes on both Naruto and whatever the future had in store for him. One wasn't really a threat to him at all, while the other was going to destroy the worlds if he had the chance.

XxX

(Hueco Mundo – Las Noches)

Aizen sat at the head of a great table with only two of his Arrancar army there with him, "I think we've let the Gotei 13 see enough of our lands without any repercussions. I believe it's time to show them the power of our forces. The true force of my army, the Espada." He looked over the people in the room with him, "I want Kaname to head to the world of the living with you two and your Fraccion if you desire to bring them. Follow his orders."

One of the Espada at the table with him was Tia Harribel, "Yes Aizen-sama."

The other was a man with pink hair and glasses on his face, "Whatever you say Aizen-sama. Can I attempt to capture the strange man that allied himself with the Shinigami?"

"If you wish Szayel Aporro." Aizen said with his usual smile, "Kaname will give you your objectives for this mission, I expect nothing less than success."

* * *

Omake: Soi-Fon's Date With Naruto

She was not particularly pleased with this turn of events, mostly the part that had her losing. When she made the bet she did not figure into account the fact that she had a limiter on her powers and Naruto did not. So when Naruto drew his glowing sword and cut a path of destruction through the group of Arrancar that had attacked them in Hueco Mundo, smashing her respective score she posted doing the same, she felt rather slighted, however she had been the one to make the wager and she intended to go forward with paying off her debt.

Hence she waited in the lobby of the base waiting on Naruto while in her Gigai, per his instructions.

It didn't take long for Naruto to meet her there, dressed in his own street clothes and smiling at her, "Don't give me that look Jooubachi, this is more for you than for me. I could have made you do something humiliating instead of this."

"This is plenty humiliating." Soi-Fon assured him, crossing her arms as he walked up towards her.

Naruto leaned over to get face-to-face with her, "You think going on a date is humiliating? Why? You're so good-looking, you should be doing things like this all the time." Soi-Fon scoffed and headed for the front door, "Well, you're going to be doing this tonight."

"Don't you have something more important to do right now?" Soi-Fon said, trying to get him to back down from taking her out, or at least get him to put it off until later.

Naruto shook his head as he followed her out into the cool night air, "No. Everything we just did can wait until tomorrow. I wouldn't even know how to handle any of it right now anyway, so it's better to clear my head. And what better way to do it than to spend some time with my Jooubachi." He said wrapping an arm around her and getting a growl from her, "You could try to enjoy it you know."

Soi-Fon stopped growling at him and let him lead her along to wherever he was intending to take her. She sincerely hoped against hope that this wouldn't be a waste of her time. Then again, Naruto had yet to fail since she had met him.

XxX

She had expected him to take her to some carnival or something to try and show off, but she would have hated that. She almost expected him to just take her to stupid movie that she had absolutely no interest in seeing.

Soi-Fon was relatively surprised when she found that the only thing Naruto did was lead her to the riverside and take her for a walk. She subtly tried to stare at him to determine his intentions, but for the time being she was rather enjoying just doing this.

Finally Naruto spoke up, "I know you don't really like doing anything loud or flashy… and this was the only thing I could think of on short notice that might put a smile on your face other than going to mess with Urahara… unless you want to do that?"

A smirk came to her lips remembering the havoc Naruto caused in the Seireitei and thinking of what Naruto could bring onto Urahara Kisuke's head, "Maybe some other time Uzumaki."

Naruto shrugged, it was no big loss, he could think of something for them to do, "Maybe for your birthday then." He suggested instead with a chuckle before returning to thinking, "Are you hungry?" He asked. They had just gotten through with a mission so she might have been.

Soi-Fon shook her head, "Not particularly. I could use a snack if that means anything though."

A snack. He could do that easily enough. She certainly wasn't proving to be very high-maintenance thus far, but that wouldn't have bothered him even if she had been. Heeding her request, Naruto led her to place to get ice cream before they continued to walk. Maybe if he did that then he could think of something to do with her. Soi-Fon was certainly being cordial enough, just like he expected her to be. She was always far nicer when she didn't think anyone was watching her, like she had to keep up appearances as a cold and aloof person. As far as he could see the only time when she wasn't like that was with Yoruichi and to a lesser extent with him.

"This is actually nice." He heard her say suddenly as she kept at eating her ice cream cone, "I guess you know me well enough after all Uzumaki. How you would know that I would be more partial to a walk like this than anything else I don't think I'll ever find out, unless you asked Yoruichi-sama, but I don't think you did." She looked over the side of the grassy hill they were walking next to in order to see the moonlit water.

Naruto felt like slapping his hand to his forehead. This was a girl that admitted to him that she liked to meditate in her spare time, why wouldn't she like a simple walk like this? Damn he thought too hard about things sometimes, but he had good intentions. Still, he was accomplishing his mission. The usually hardened look on Soi-Fon's face was nowhere in sight and she looked rather content at the moment. It was good to see her like that if he was to be honest.

"I'm glad you're having a good enough time." Naruto said to Soi-Fon, putting his hands in his pockets, "I just want you to be happy Jooubachi."

Soi-Fon made a humming noise as she started to actually eat the cone her ice cream came in having finished it off, "That name you call me, why do you call me any kind of name at all? I call you by your actual name."

"That's an easy question to answer." Naruto said in response, getting Soi-Fon to turn her eyes towards him to get the information from him, "Because I think we're rather close. I like you." He saw her eyes widen when he admitted it to her, "And I have an old habit of giving nicknames to people that I like."

Soi-Fon finished off her cone and shook her head at him, "How could you possibly say that you like me when most of our relationship is originally based on me trying to kill you?"

Naruto laughed, surprising her until he spoke, "Most of the people I've ended up being friends with are people that tried to hurt me somehow. But you don't want to kill me right now do you? So it's alright." He saw Soi-Fon smile as well, even if she tried to hide it by turning forward again, "Just know that I do care about you, and you've got a friend in me even if you don't want one."

'You are truly a strange man Uzumaki Naruto.' Soi-Fon thought to herself as she smiled in spite of herself, wanting to keep up the appearance that most saw her as day in and day out, but by now she knew that Naruto was well aware of how comfortable she was around him… the disarming bastard.

"And as a friend…" Naruto said with a hint of amusement in his voice, "…I have the right to help you out when I think you need me. Just like this." He reached over to her face and picked a crumb of the cone she had been eating from the corner of her mouth, stopping her in her tracks in embarrassment as he popped the crumb into his mouth, "I couldn't just let you walk around with a crumb on your face Jooubachi, no matter how cute you looked."

Even with it being the middle of the night it was still evident how red Soi-Fon's face was as she seemed to seethe in anger, "Uzumaki!" She shouted as she barreled into him with her tiny body, sending them both down the side of the hill as he laughed the entire way, "I will kill you!"

They settled, both sitting with Naruto holding Soi-Fon's back against him, keeping her from trying to turn and throttle him, "Calm down… I knew you were going to hit me once I did that. Mostly because women love to hurt me for some reason, but I'm not holding that against you. Actually I'm holding _you_ against _me_." He said, laughing again when he felt Soi-Fon squirm to break free again.

After a minute or two she finally stopped fighting back and just sat on the side of the hill with Naruto still holding onto her in case she was still ornery. It was a really nice night out and even after Naruto did what he did… something she still couldn't believe he had the gall to do, but that was not the point. Even after that, things could have been far worse everything considered.

It had been a long day, it had been a long week in general, and she didn't think anything of it to sit her head back against Naruto's chest as she allowed the tranquil night to calm her. Letting out a sigh, Soi-Fon spoke, "I swear, you make me sick Uzumaki." She said with no malice or actual intent in her voice.

Naruto simply kept his smile and held onto her once he felt her rest comfortably against him, "Love you too Jooubachi."

* * *

**Chapter complete and I have to say that no one I actually read stories from is updating shit. Although I personally have finals this week the first one starting in approximately… thirty minutes at 12:30 p.m. but hey, I can still be upset yeah?**

**It's a decent damn day to be an American as Osama Bin Laden finally took two (at least two, I'm sure) to the chest after almost ten years. Rejoice. Maybe my professor will be in a good-ass mood and pass us all with 100's just for being alive today. I doubt it, but a man can hope.**

**Catch you all on the flip-side, drop your boy a line. Until the next time I update something that you read, I hope you enjoyed this. **

**Kenchi out.**

**P.S. When I wrote the disclaimer above the Sunday morning before today as a joke I had no idea that something like what happened Sunday night would actually go down. That's so awesome! I'm a goddamn American hero! Talk about foreshadowing like a motherfucker! I'm awesome!**


	16. Run This Town Tonight

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. But I will one day, once I find Kishimoto and Kubo's addresses then it'll be on. We're gonna smoke 'em out!

**Chapter 16: Run This Town Tonight**

* * *

(On the Road)

"Fucking hell Uzumaki-brat." Hidan grunted angrily as he sat hunched over the steering wheel of the car that he and Naruto were sitting in, "We're going to be later than all get out for the flight because you just had to let that Shinigami punk let off some steam."

Naruto sat in the passenger seat clutching the armrest hard enough to leave divots from his fingers gripping it, "Just calm down Hidan. You can barely drive on normal streets and I barely feel safe with the driving you're doing right now."

Hidan was currently piloting their vehicle at a speed of well over ninety miles per hour down the highway towards the large city that the airport of their choice sat in, "Meh, who cares? We're immortal."

"I'm not immortal like that you asshole! I can still die!" Naruto shouted at Hidan with anime tears running down his face, "Now slow down and pull over! I'm driving damn it!"

"Fuck no!" Hidan argued right back, "If you drive like the grandpa you are we'll never make it on time for the plane out of here! I hate the desert, but I'm going to love flying on these airplanes I hear so much about!"

Naruto pulled his seatbelt tighter across his chest as Hidan dragged the car over three separate lanes to pass traffic. At this point Naruto was grateful that he was at least staying on their side of the road, "If you keep driving we'll never make it because you'll roll the damn car over and blow us all up in flames!"

"You're just being a pussy!" Hidan shouted at his boss, "We're making great time here! At this rate we'll make it there within the hour!"

Yeah, they'd make it there in an hour, if 'there' was the hospital, "I need to buy my own plane…" Naruto cried as he gave up and sat in his seat waiting for sweet death to claim him by way of Hidan getting them into a horrible car accident, "I'd learn how to fly, and then I'd have clones run it, and then this kind of shit would never happen…"

XxX

(Karakura Town – Naruto's Base)

In the training facility, Gaara sat calmly on a rock as Tatsuki stood in her training clothes punching one hand into her other palm with a nervous look on her face. She had felt Gaara's Reiatsu the other day just like all of the others and it was crushing. Luckily for her, Gaara was still in his Gigai, just sitting and waiting, "Are you ready to begin Tatsuki?" Gaara asked in his usual tone of voice.

By now Tatsuki, like most of the others just accepted that Gaara was always going to talk that way. It didn't mean he wasn't a nice guy, or that there was something really off about him, it was just how he was. Naruto saw him as a close friend, so why shouldn't anyone else? The him being an Arrancar thing really wasn't a good excuse since Hidan was one too, and was infinitely more dangerous than Gaara just out of sheer lunacy.

Tatsuki nodded to Gaara's question and set herself into a fighting stance, "Yes, I'm ready. So what's the test that Naruto-sensei wanted me to take?" Gaara dropped down from the rock and walked forward before stopping right in front of Tatsuki with his arms crossed, "What's wrong? Are you going to tell me?"

Gaara merely closed his eyes, "One hit. All you need to do is get one hit on me. It doesn't have to hurt, it doesn't have to even be solid, but if you can hit me once then you pass."

"One time?" Tatsuki asked with a raised eyebrow. That seemed too easy to be a test to her. Gaara didn't even get out of that Gigai of his before setting the order and it didn't look like he was going to, "That's it?"

"That's it." Gaara confirmed for her, "I want you to use every little thing that Naruto instructed you on since day one. From how to run to achieve better speeds, to the basic ninjutsu that he taught you. Nothing he taught you will be useless against me here. Use it all. Attack to kill or maim, otherwise you won't get close to laying a finger on me."

"Kill or maim?" Tatsuki repeated in a whisper. She was used to full contact fighting, but there were rules, ethics, things that you just didn't do. She had been fighting in that manner since she was old enough to put on a pair of gloves and now Gaara was telling her to disregard all of that and simply fight to end a life.

Gaara's eyes were closed as he nodded solemly, "Your enemies, our enemies, they will stop at nothing to achieve whatever goal they are after. When you accepted your abilities you accepted the life of fighting as a warrior, or in this case as a shinobi. I have killed more than my fair share in my time as has Naruto and I don't think you need me to get started on Hidan." Tatsuki gulped and shook her head, "Naruto's original plan was to have you fight and defeat a Hollow once one appeared, but he figured this test would be more appropriate… because our enemies won't look like outright monsters, they'll look human for the most part. Now enough talk. Take me down if you can, land one blow."

"I have to fight as if I were trying to kill you…" She said mostly to herself before shouting as she ran forward at Gaara. She threw a punch only for sand to stop her punch in its tracks, "What?"

Gaara simply stared at her, seemingly disappointed by her first attack, "Attacking head-on against a superior opponent? You threw what you've learned right out of the window without being prompted by pressure." Gaara's sand lifted her off of the round and shook her about, "You never, never, never, never attack an opponent head-on, even if you _are_ stronger than them. Anything can be waiting for you in the case of a direct attack. Something like this." Gaara dropped Tatsuki to the ground and as she landed on her feet his sand turned into a hand that flicked her in the face, sending her back.

Tatsuki sputtered and spat out sand as she held her forehead where Gaara's sand hand hit her, "How are you doing that?" She asked, pointing at Gaara's ability to control sand, "Can Naruto-sensei do that? Am I going to learn that?"

Gaara shook his head, "It's a special ability that only I can do. Naruto can't do that so you can't do that. And you won't be learning anything else until you can hit me. Now use your head." He more or less ordered.

Tatsuki put her game face back on and prepared to head in again. She picked up a stone from off of the ground and threw it at Gaara only for it to bounce off of his sand shield and harmlessly, 'So direct attacks clearly won't work. I know how to work angles in fights, but I'm going to totally have to catch Gaara off-guard here.' She thought to herself.

"An opponent won't just let you stand there and think Tatsuki." Gaara said as he whipped his sand around him as a way to try and intimidate her, "So neither will I. Prepare yourself. Suna Shuriken (Sand Shuriken)." Gaara threw projectiles of sand from his own supply and almost smirked when he heard her cry out in alarm as she began to get herself moving to avoid damage, "Come on… Naruto and a few others were able to find ways past this to hit me when they were fresh genin. One of them didn't even know any ninjutsu." Of course he also didn't say that the person that hit him sans ninjutsu was three times as fast as Tatsuki was.

Tatsuki found herself in full retreat as Gaara's sand pursued her endlessly, 'So I've got to counter his own attack and find a way to catch him off-guard and hit him? I think I would have rather fought the Hollow for a test than this.' She tried to change directions and get the sand to chase her back towards Gaara whom she lost sight of, but when she looked at him again he was still standing right where she left him, 'This is it!' She said as she drew closer to Gaara, 'All of his stupid sand is chasing me, there's none left to protect him!'

Gaara's body turned in Tatsuki's direction just in time for her to launch a punch that hit him right in the face, "Gotcha! I pass! Now Naruto-sensei's gotta-! Wait, what?" She said when she realized that her fist passed through Gaara's face as he was made of sand, sand that grabbed a hold of her tightly, "Hey, let me go!"

"As you wish." Gaara said, stepping out from behind a boulder as he directed his sand to throw her away.

Yelling in alarm as she sailed through the air, Tatsuki finally flipped through and landed on her feet stumbling backwards but satisfied that after a week of training her dexterity had improved as well to go along with the ninjutsu that Naruto taught her and directed her to practice.

As Gaara took up his usual place in the middle of the field, directing his sand to work things out for him, Tatsuki was really against trying to get close to Gaara again without a decent plan first.

Tatsuki complete lack of anything ranged was evident here as she stayed back. The most ranged attack she tried was throwing rocks at Gaara while on the run, something that didn't have the faintest chance of working. And Gaara was starting to get bored. A bored Gaara meant bad things for people.

In the distant past a bored Gaara might kill someone. This Gaara however… "That odd threat that Naruto made to me the other day… how could he possibly apply that in the middle of a battle?" He asked himself, not paying attention to Tatsuki as he held his hands in a tiger seal and looked at them, "Well he did manage to actually do it to me once I wonder. Therefore it _is_ an effective combat technique."

As he did this, Tatsuki was taking the lapse in Gaara's attack to catch her breath behind the cover of a boulder. As she looked around the edge of it she no longer saw Gaara where he had been standing the entire time before this, "Huh? Where did he go?"

"You really shouldn't let your opponent get behind you all of the time."

Tatsuki's eyes widened as she heard that voice behind her, and it made another statement to follow.

"What did he call it? Oh yes, I forget the full name but, Sennen Goroshi (One Thousand Years of Death)!"

A large pair of sand hands from behind Tatsuki flew towards her exposed backside in the form of both the index and middle fingers being held out. The poor girl never knew what hit her.

XxX

Elsewhere in the base, Yoruichi was with Urahara and Orihime as they sat in the kitchen.

"AAAHHH!"

Orihime jumped out of her chair in shock as the yell from the basement echoed throughout the entire building as clear as day, "That was Tatsuki-chan's voice! D-Do you think she's in trouble?"

"Nah." Yoruichi said dismissively as she calmly sipped at the milk she had procured for herself. Naruto seemed to have a nasty habit of keeping milk in the refrigerator after it spoiled, never really checking to see if it actually was expired before drinking it. That had inspired her to keep her own stash for herself. His little trips to the bathroom, while extremely amusing, also kept everyone else from ever even wanting to touch milk that Naruto had bought if they hadn't seen him buy it that day, "It's just training. Gaara won't have as many frills attached to his approach that Naruto does. He's just going ahead with the task assigned to him. It's going to be kind of rough but the instructions were clear. No help."

Urahara smirked at Yoruichi as Orihime sat back down, "So I have a question. With nobody here having anymore than basic medical skills how do you guys heal after training too hard?"

Yoruichi shrugged in response, "I don't know. We just sleep it off. We're usually busy working instead of training that hard, mostly just for upkeep, and no one's been hurt that badly that it would matter yet. Except for Hidan, but he's fine with it. The guy stabs himself with a spike on a daily basis."

Urahara nodded in understanding before tilting his head towards Orihime, "So is she a part of this yet like you and I?"

Yoruichi smiled at how Orihime got nervous at being put on the spot by the former 12th Division captain, "She might as well be for as much as she stays around with Tatsuki when she trains. The boys are thinking about it for sure… not sure about Ichigo. I don't see why she doesn't join, the perks for what Naruto would ask you to do are great." She started listing things off on her fingers, "You get a wonderful place to stay, apartment with everything, right here for free. Naruto will pay you for what you do, and he pays well-."

"Definitely." Urahara said with a grin that he hid his face behind his fan, "Do you know what he shells out just for the Gigai he asked me for? Not to mention paying me to actually do the research on Arrancar, something I probably would have done anyway. The guy has the deepest pockets for someone that doesn't act like it."

Yoruichi picked up where Urahara cut her off from, "-And he'd never make you do a mission you didn't want to do, nor would he make you do something he wouldn't go do himself. Man I feel like a recruiter or something." She said with a laugh.

"I'll join." Orihime said, laughing as well, settling down to keep explaining, "If I didn't then my powers wouldn't be any good for anyone except for me right? I want to help!"

Yoruichi put her milk down and clapped her hands together, "Very good! Now like I said, you get a place to stay here for free. You can keep living at your apartment that you have now, but you could move here if you wanted to. And don't worry about waiting to do anything until we tell Naruto, he'll be happy that you joined. This is going to be fun, finally I have another girl in the group to talk to."

"What about Ururu?" Urahara mentioned.

"Is she even here?" Yoruichi countered immediately.

"She's at the shop with Jinta and Tessai." He answered as if it were obvious, "Why?"

Yoruichi placed her cheek in her hand with a smirking look on her face that if she currently had a tail anyone watching would swear it was waving slowly, "Yes, but that's not here though is it? And what am I really going to talk about with a little girl Kisuke?"

Urahara frowned and stroked his stubbly chin, "Hmm, point taken. And on that note I need to go back to the shop to check on things, hopefully Jinta didn't destroy some of the things I have in storage again…" He stood up from his seat and looked around the large eating area before he voiced his current thought, "Is it just me or do things feel weird tonight? I mean, something just feels off and I can't explain it. I feel anxious."

Yoruichi narrowed her eyes as she was able to sense something off as well coming from outside, "It's not just you…" She said as she stood up and headed to the basement, "I need to go get Gaara."

XxX

In the moonlit skies over Karakura Town, a Garganta opened up to reveal Tousen Kaname leading Szayel Aporro Granz and Tia Harribel along with her Fracción, "You all know what to do." The former Shinigami captain said, "It's time to let our enemies know just who they are dealing with."

Szayel floated off on his own, "I think I will go and gather some research while we're here. Aizen-sama has expressed interest in a few special cases. I want to see what is so important about them."

"Very well." Tousen said, his blindfolded eyes unable to take in the sight of his Arrancar underling leaving, "And you…" He said, looking at Harribel.

She nodded, knowing what his directions would be even before he spoke to her, "I will show them the strength of the Espada, and that their resistance is a futile measure." She said before disappearing in a Sonido along with her Fracción.

With his subordinates off to get to work on their tasks, Tousen simply stood there in the sky listening to the quiet old industrial district, waiting on the fireworks to begin.

XxX

Harribel eventually came to a stop in the air, as if she were waiting for something. Her Fraccion who were following behind her came to a stop as well, wondering why she had done such. Apacci spoke up, "Um, why did we-?"

Harribel held her hand up to get her to be quiet before she seemingly spoke to someone who wasn't there, "I am aware of you watching our movements. You cannot hide your power from me. Even when you have it concealed the way that you do right now it is still very noticeable."

In his own burst of Sonido, Gaara appeared in front of her, now outside of his Gigai with his Zanpakutou claw-looking spear on his back. He was still dressed in his desert-garb; the white robe and the long beige scarf around his neck, "I am still not used to concealing my power while I am awake." He said as he stood there with his arms crossed over his chest, "The clothing that you all wear. You are in league with this 'Aizen Sousuke' person that Naruto has informed me of, are you not?"

"Uzumaki Naruto told you this?" Harribel asked, just as calmly as Gaara said, getting a nod from him, "Then yes I am. Why do you choose to fight against Aizen-sama's ambition? You are fighting against your fellow Arrancar, why?"

"For a friend." Gaara said simply, "The ambition of a megalomaniac holds no interest for me. I do not care about my existence as an Arrancar, it is just a meaningless label. There is no source of pride or disdain when I think of what I am, I am simply Sabaku no Gaara and that is that. I have been given another opportunity to defend those that are close to me and this time I will not fail."

Harribel nodded, but in her mind something else ran through it. Once again this Uzumaki Naruto, who came out of nowhere, got the trust of the Gotei 13, made an enemy of Aizen, and now obtained the assistance of a clearly powerful Arrancar in seemingly no time at all, "I am Tia Harribel."

"I am aware of this." Gaara said, surprising her, "Naruto oftentimes comments on how our enemies are not all evil. You are the prime example that he uses when he speaks of such." He drew his spear from his back, pointing the claws at her, "However if you are here under the orders of Aizen I must defeat you. Prepare yourself."

Harribel's Fracción all went to their weapons to provide assistance when Harribel stopped them, "Do not interfere." She ordered, "Can you not feel the power he is trying to hide? This opponent is beyond your level to deal with. Even all three of you would more than likely fall by his hand." She gestured away, "You have your own objectives to concern yourselves with. Make our presence known to our enemies." She said, more or less shooing them away.

With the absence of her underlings, Harribel drew her Zanpakutou, "Now that that is out of the way let us begin." She said before lunging forward to attack Gaara who stood in place. Gaara lifted his spear forward and spun around in a full circle before lunging at her, using his momentum to further power his stabbing motion. The female Arrancar dodged to the side of the stab and came on down the line, intending to take her advantage as she saw it and cut Gaara down.

With one hand, Gaara grabbed her wrist, stopping her from finishing her attack and cutting his head off. Gaara's emotionless green eyes stared at her as his hand shook violently in his attempt to hold her back, "You are very powerful." Gaara said before letting go of her hand and getting away from her attack, "When I went into hibernation there was only one Hollow I would say had strength comparable to yours, my most bitter enemy. It seems I slept for far too long."

"I am an Espada." Harribel said informatively, "One of the top ten ranked Arrancar in Aizen-sama's army. I would certainly hope that I am considered to be strong. However you are still holding back and I personally find that quite offensive." She began to generate her spiritual power to the point where it was clearly visible, being yellow in color.

Gaara reset himself in his basic stance with his spear, "It is not my intention to offend you." Gaara said as he started releasing his own power as well, "I am just unused to fighting battles. I haven't fought at full strength in 2000 years. Now would be the time to shake the cobwebs off I guess." Gaara's Reiatsu was also yellow, but a duller tone and was wispy, flickering away from his body like sand being blown in the wind, "Sorry to keep you waiting."

XxX

"Hello Yoruichi." Tousen said as he ducked a powerful swinging kick that was intended for his head. He jumped away from the attack and faced her down, drawing his Zanpakutou, "I wish I could say it was good to see you, but you and I both know that I am blind."

Yoruichi stood on the air staring down one of Aizen's top conspirators with a hand on her hip, "Hello Tousen. I wish I could say it was good to see you as well, but I missed my kick." She quipped impatiently. She didn't want any banter with someone like him, she just wanted to defeat him and be done with the whole thing altogether. His different look from the last time she saw him what with him wearing a sleeveless form of the white uniform that she figured was par the course for Aizen's forces, the see-through blindfold around his eyes, and his hair with his braids all let down showed her that he was serious about his betrayal of the Gotei 13.

Tousen smirked, "Well I could hear you. My other senses are far greater than a normal Shinigami's as you should know. I don't need to be able to see you, and the slightest noise, such as your clothing ruffling is enough for me." Tousen then disappeared and reappeared right behind her in a split-second, however he didn't bother attacking, merely standing there until Yoruichi's form faded from existence, "So that's your Utsusemi (Cicada)." He said in an interested manner, "I didn't think I would be able to feel the difference between the presence of you and one of your afterimages."

"Well it's good to know if nothing else." Yoruichi said, as she stood back in front of Tousen, staying the way the battle had begun, with the two at a temporary stalemate, "I don't understand why you would do what you did to the Soul Society, but I don't care." He wasn't fast enough to keep up with her, "It's not going to change a thing."

Tousen scoffed at the way Yoruichi spoke, as if he were the villain, "Shihouin Yoruichi, perhaps the most legendary assassin in the history of the Seireitei… of course someone like you would know nothing of justice. You're merely a tool, someone points at a target meant to be rid of and you perform the job. Someone like you follows no path, not that of justice nor corruption."

"Yeah…" Yoruichi said with a sly grin, "I'm pretty neutral until someone gives me a reason not to be." Her grin dropped and she flared her Reiatsu threateningly, "Aizen's dumbass plan and the fact that you're going along with it is plenty of reason for this 'weapon' to be pointed at you and yours." She growled out before using her notorious speed to get in a hit on Tousen that sent him flying to the ground below.

Hitting him even just one time felt good, as Tousen wasn't known for being durable and able to take a beating. By her count she wouldn't have to work too hard to beat him as far as putting the boots to him went. That one punch probably crumbled his insides.

As he fell to the ground, Tousen rolled in the air to get his feet under him and landed in the street, cracking the pavement with the force he hit the ground with due to how hard Yoruichi hit him. His legs wobbled underneath him as he spoke to her, "Real justice would never appeal to someone like you Shihouin. You need chaos far too much… just like your lover Uzumaki. He's a killer, more of one than possibly even Zaraki Kenpachi. He likes the bloodshed, the violence. Fighting is what he lives for, what he clings to. He is a tainted being."

Yoruichi glared down at Tousen, her fists shaking as she heard him talk down about Naruto. He didn't need any more of someone else doing that. He did it enough about himself.

_(Flashback – Four Days Ago)_

_Yoruichi lay naked in the bed in Naruto's quarters with a satisfied look on her face, covered by his bedspread, "Yeah, about that clone we were talking earlier about you leaving… I think you spoil me too much for a clone to be enough."_

_Naruto laughed as he got himself dressed in his school uniform, "Trust me, as long as you didn't do something like hit it too hard or bite it hard enough to draw blood it would be enough." He shook his head with a fond look on his face, "I swear I don't get what it is you see in me Yoruichi-chan… I mean first of all I'm older than you. _Way _older than you."_

_Yoruichi let out a noise that sounded something akin to a purr before she spoke, "I'd like to call you 'experienced' more than anything else." She said with a predatory smile that she wished she could have acted on at the moment. Alas, Naruto had to take Gaara to school and they were already probably late so what they had already done would have to wait for now._

_Naruto sat down on the bed and grabbed his socks and shoes to place on his feet as Yoruichi's fingertips began to dance along his back, "I'm serious. I don't know how you can stand trying to be with me. You know what I am, what I've done, how long I've been doing it for." He placed his shoes on the ground to step into and stopped to look at his hands, "Sometimes I'm glad that I can't die naturally and that it's going to take one hell of a fight for anyone to actually kill me."_

_Yoruichi sat up in the bed, holding the sheets over her chest to cover her modesty, as if it mattered at this point, "Why? I mean I know that you've been alive for so long that it would be a major shift, but it would be okay. If you were to die you would wind up being a Shinigami so fast it would be like you just moved. As if you just decided to live in the Soul Society instead of here."_

"_Let's be honest here Yoruichi-chan." Naruto said as he finished tying his shoes, "If I died I wouldn't go to the Soul Society. I would probably go to hell. I've killed so many people Yoruichi-chan… no matter what I do I always end up fighting for some reason. And as much as I say I value peace, if there were no more battles to be fought, no more conflict in the world… then I wouldn't know what to do with myself. One of the only times I even feel alive anymore is on the battlefield."_

_Hearing that brought a frown to Yoruichi's face, 'Naruto, no one else thinks of you that way.' It wasn't that Naruto had low self-esteem by any stretch of the imagination; he bordered narcissism on a regular basis with how much he believed that he could do anything. For an example he was planning on building an entire organization from the ground up with the intent to defend Karakura Town and whatever else with whatever he could recruit for himself, "Is fighting the only thing that makes you feel alive?"_

"_No, there are a few other things that make me feel alive." Naruto said, standing up and walking towards the door. He turned around and gave her a brilliant smile that made her heart skip a beat, "You certainly do for sure." He took a moment to just look at Yoruichi in his bed, and for some reason his gaze made her feel absolutely beautiful. He then left the room and shut the door behind him, "Alright Gaara, it's time to go!" _

"_Finally." Gaara replied tersely from a distance, "…You are absolutely depraved did you know that? I heard all of that by the way."_

(Flashback End)

Yoruichi spoke to her blind but dangerous enemy in a calm but edgy manner, "If he's a tainted being then I'm right there along with him, and I couldn't be any happier about it." People doing what Tousen planned to do alongside Aizen didn't get to say such things about Naruto. She didn't even like hearing him say such things about himself. How someone grew on her so much in just over four months she didn't know and she didn't care.

Tousen didn't respond, he simply held up his sword, "Nake, Suzumushi (Cry, Cricket)." With his Zanpakutou's Shikai release command, a piercing, high-pitched noise hit Yoruichi's ears, forcing her to cover her ears in a futile attempt to block out the noise.

'I need to get away from that damned noise!' Yoruichi thought before quickly backpedaling with her Shunpo to get herself as far away from the noise as she could.

"Hadou #54: Haien (Way of Destruction #54: Abolishing Flames)."

An oblong blast of purple energy flew through the air at Yoruichi, hitting her body and incinerating it on contact with her.

"I missed her again." Tousen said quietly to himself before jumping back as an axe kick from Yoruichi put a hellish crater into the street where her foot landed, "But you didn't get away unscathed did you?"

'Damn him and his stupid senses.' Yoruichi no longer had on her orange long-sleeved overshirt as she had to cast it aside to avoid being caught on fire by Tousen's last Kidou. Instead she had on the backless, sleeveless shirt she wore underneath her orange top. Her shoulder had a slight burn on it and she had a trickle of blood coming from her ears but other than that she was okay, 'He could probably smell my shirt burn when I got away.'

Tousen waved his sword in front of him slowly, "You are just as fast as they say Yoruichi. Let's see how fast that truly is… Suzumushi Nishiki: Benihikou (Cricket 2nd Movement: Crimson Flying Locusts). The sword vibrated momentarily before he moved the blade around him in a circle, a trail appearing from the path he made. The trail turned into hundreds of blades that rained down on Yoruichi.

Showing her speed once again in a necessary manner to survive, Yoruichi dodged all of the blades that came her way, gritting her teeth as she decided to close the distance between herself and him, grabbing one of the fallen blades and pulling it from the ground to hurl back up at Tousen.

Seeing the blade coming with his ability to 'see' by sensing spiritual power, Tousen avoided impalement by way of his own weapon only for Yoruichi to appear behind him, her arm extended with her palm out, a red orb of energy in it, "Hadou #31: Shakkahou (Way of Destruction #31: Red Fire Cannon)!" A red pillar of energy flew from the orb and hit Tousen full-contact, knocking him back into the side of a nearby building right through the wall, "I know he's not done yet and neither am I!" Yoruichi said to herself as she pointed her palm at the hole in the wall where she knew Tousen had gone and began an actual incantation since to her knowledge he hadn't moved from where he landed.

"Sprinkled on the bones of the beast! Sharp tower, red crystal, steel ring. Move and become the wind, stop and become the calm. The sound of warring spears the empty castle!" In Yoruichi's palm, yellow electric energy formed into an orb that crackled with power, "Hadou #63: Raikouhou (Way of Destruction #63: Thunder Roar Sear)!" The attack was fired from her hand in a massive strike of energy that blew apart the inside of the building she had been aiming into.

Yoruichi covered her eyes as the debris from her last Kidou kicked back at her by way of the backdraft.

"How terrible a weakness that must be-."

Yoruichi's eyes widened as a heavily injured Tousen walked out of the wreckage Yoruichi had just created, "-To have to protect one's eyes for fear of losing your sight. Luckily I don't have that disadvantage as I have never had my sight to lose in the first place. Tousen held his sword up and put his other hand on the ring that was attached to the guard of his blade, "Bankai… Suzumushi Tsuishiki: Enma Kourogi (Cricket Final Form: Devil Cricket)." The ring on Tousen's guard began spinning rapidly.

Around Yoruichi and Tousen, the ring expanded in spiritual energy and split into ten glowing ones. They then flew outward and formed a large black dome that was anchored to the ground around the two combatants.

Within the dome Yoruichi could no longer see; it was pitch dark, and though she hadn't noticed it yet, she could no longer smell or hear a single thing, 'Grr, this is so not good. I'm a total-.' She wound up getting cut across her back harshly and dropped to the ground before rolling and escaping a follow-up attack for the moment, '-I'm a total sitting duck…'

XxX

Tatsuki was running through the empty streets of the old industrial district Naruto's base was set in the middle of with Orihime following her close behind, "Tatsuki-chan where are you going? We were supposed to stay at the base until everyone came back!"

"But what if they need our help?" Tatsuki argued in return, "I felt more than just two people show up in Karakura Town. Yoruichi and Gaara are outnumbered!"

"Heh…" They heard a brash voice scoff, "And what exactly are two weaklings like you going to do to help anyone?" They both looked up into the sky to see three women; Mila Rose, Sun-Sung, and Apacci, all standing there looking down at them. Apacci smirked and kept speaking, "You're strong enough to see us though… I wonder how useful either of you are in a fight. You are supposed to be our enemies after all."

Tatsuki immediately dropped into a fighting stance while Orihime stood at the ready to do whatever was needed with her powers. The three women floated down to the ground in front of them, all looking at them in amusement. Mila Rose let out a laugh, "Isn't that cute? These two humans think that just because they can see us they can fight us."

Tatsuki tried to put up a confident front, but she could feel their Reiatsu. While it was a far cry away from anything Gaara produced that day, or even what Naruto did himself to get her used to the oppressive feeling of fighting someone stronger than her, she could feel that these women were stronger than her. Still, it was fight or run, and she knew that if they ran she wouldn't get far as long as they could sense her… and she hadn't gotten around to learning how to stanch her chakra so that others couldn't sense her as easily yet. A good sensor would find her regardless.

"It's not just the two of us." Tatsuki said, making the ram, snake, and tiger seals that Naruto taught her for one of her techniques, "Not anymore it isn't! Bunshin no Jutsu (Clone Jutsu)!"

The three Fracción of Harribel went wide-eyed when they saw ten copies of Tatsuki standing in front of them. Since when could humans do that? No one ever told them of anyone with special abilities like that outside of the one blonde human, the banished Shinigami and the crazy Arrancar guy that they had come into contact with in Hueco Mundo not too long ago. That was kind of something that you needed to tell people before you sent them somewhere to do anything.

Orihime looked at the copies of Tatsuki with a smile on her face as she was prepared to back her up.

Finally getting over the small surprise at seeing a human with some fight in them, Mila Rose was the first of the Arrancar attack squad to speak up with confidence, "So what? It doesn't matter if there's one or ten ants, they'll all be crushed in the end." She said as she drew her broadsword-style Zanpakutou.

The copies of Tatsuki narrowed their eyes at the remark and prepared an attack as there was no way she was going to let any of these people harm her best friend as long as she was there, 'This is what I've been trying to train for isn't it?' All ten of then ran forward much to the growing amusement of her opponents.

Apacci laughed as she stepped forward and formed red bullets around both of her fists, "You're certainly making this easier than it needs to be aren't you?" She asked before throwing punches the kept firing the blasts, "Bala (Hollow Bullet)!" As the attacks flew rapidly at all of the Tatsukis and hit them, they faded from existence one by one until the last one was actually knocked back by the attack. Apacci was about to taunt her again when Tatsuki's body was enshrouded in a puff of smoke, a piece of cracked debris falling to the ground in her place, "What?"

"Koten Zanshun (Solitary Sacred Cutting Shield)!"

Apacci narrowly avoided the small flashing projectile that flew at her from Orihime and turned to glare at the girl, prepared to attack her for trying to catch her off-guard.

"Dynamic Entry!"

Tatsuki used her clones and a substitution as a diversion to get an attempt at a blindside attack that Orihime assisted heavily with. As she jumped through the air, intent on planting the sole of her shoe against Apacci's face, Mila Rose appeared in front of her and grabbed her foot with one hand, only taking one step backward to brace herself for the impact, "What was that supposed to be?" Mila Rose taunted, "Even if I'd let that hit someone as weak as Apacci-." Appaci then growled angrily at the jibe from her Amazonian looking partner, "There's no way that would have been enough to beat her. You're wasting our time." She said before throwing Tatsuki aside effortlessly.

Tatsuki was able to back handspring and get her feet back under her, but felt like kicking herself for overlooking the other two. As if they would actually let things go one-on-one, especially after the assist from Orihime.

Sung-Sun laughed with her hand in front of her mouth, "Still, for Apacci to even be caught in a situation like that by a human. What does that say about her?"

Apacci glowered at jokes being sent her way from both of her teammates and looked angrily at Orihime and Tatsuki, "I'll tell you what it says… it says that those two are dead right about now!" At the tip of the horn on her head that was a part of her mask fragment, a red beam formed, "Cero (Hollow Flash)!" The beam then fired directly at the two human girls.

Tatsuki grit her teeth and prepared to move before she realized that Orihime was still there as well, 'What am I going to do about this? Come on think!'

"Santen Kesshun (Three Sacred Link Shields) I reject!"

A clear yellow triangle shield appeared in front of both Orihime and Tatsuki that blocked the Cero that had been fired at them. Tatsuki marveled momentarily at Orihime's defensive ability, looking at her only to get a smile in return, "I'm no good at fighting, but I can be a good shield I think."

Tatsuki then smiled at her in return, "Then I guess I really will have to get stronger, so I can do the fighting for the both of us."

Apacci blinked in shock at the two girls winding up unscathed after her Cero, "Just who the hell are they?"

"Friends of ours." A stoic voice said before grunting in effort as a blast of energy flew at the three Arrancar women, forcing them to dodge. They turned to see Chad with his right arm outstretched from throwing his punch, "Orihime, Tatsuki… are you two okay?"

Orihime nodded fervently, "Yes Sado-kun, we're just fine. How did you find us?"

Chad began to walk over to them, still keeping his eyes on his apparent enemies, "We could feel the Reiatsu generating around this area of Karakura Town. It was easy to find."

"We?" Tatsuki asked with a raised eyebrow before another presence made itself clear to them all. How she had missed such a powerful aura she attributed to the gravity of the situation she had been in until just then, "Ichigo?"

"Yep." In a blur, Ichigo appeared in front of them all, facing Harribel's Fracción, "Sorry it took so long, I was kind of way on the other side of town." His eyes also never left the trio of Arrancar that he could see floating above them, "I guess that these are the enemies that Naruto tried to warn us about." He was still in his Bankai form from his meeting with Naruto and the overwhelming Reiatsu flowing from his body was something that couldn't be ignored.

Apacci hissed out a whisper to her partners, "Oh now who the hell are these guys? That big guy almost actually hit us."

Sung-Sun wasn't paying Chad any mind however, choosing to pay attention to Ichigo, "Nevermind him. The other one, the one with the spiky orange hair… can you not feel that level of strength?"

On the ground, Ichigo was already sufficiently warmed up by his little fight with Naruto and his rush all the way to the old industrial district. Needless to say he was ready for another fight, "So are you just going to stand up there and gawk all day or are we actually going to do this anytime before midnight?"

"Now that's the kind of attitude I like to hear kid!"

The sound of that excitedly manic voice alerted everyone's attention to Hidan in his Arrancar form; black cloak with red clouds standing above them with his scythe in hand. His body was radiating the same terrifying power that the three women had felt when he first underwent his transformation. An evil grin on his face, Hidan descended down closer to the level of Harribel's Fracción, "Well now I'm glad we had to come back. I would have kicked my own ass if I'd missed this little party. Did you girls miss me?"

Apacci shook off her shock at seeing Hidan, "It doesn't matter if he has all of that power, he doesn't know how to use it! We can still kick his ass!"

Hidan cackled wildly, "I'm an old hand at killing! It's all I'm good at! All I needed was enough time to figure out how to best use the power for that reason!" His dark purple Reiatsu started emitting from his body, "Who dies first?"

"Fuck you!" Apacci yelled at him, charging up another Cero at her horn, "The only one who's going to die here is you!"

Hidan licked his lips as he made a half tiger seal and held out his free hand, building up a purple Cero there as well, "I would absolutely love to see you try!"

"Cero (Hollow Flash)!"

XxX

(Gaara vs. Harribel)

All across the sky, Gaara and Harribel clashed weaponry. As of yet Gaara hadn't been able to strike home with his intimidating looking spear, nor had Harribel been able to deal with the range that Gaara's weapon gave him that went along with his skill at using it.

Harribel backed off enough to charge a yellow beam of power in the hollow portion of her Zanpakutou, "Ola Azul (Blue Wave Gun)!" She fired the blade-shaped energy projectile directly at Gaara.

Gaara merely stabbed his Zanpakutou out towards Harribel's attempted attack, "Tanuki no Tsume (Claw of the Tanuki)." The blade of Gaara's spear detached from the pole it was at the head of and flew towards Harribel's yellow blade of energy, immediately disintegrating on contact, not slowing it down in the least.

'What was the point of that?' Harribel wondered as she watched Gaara narrowly dodge her attack, letting it smash into a building below and demolish it, 'He had to know that his blade was weaker than my technique.' What she didn't see were the granules of sand that comprised Gaara's blade reforming behind her in the shape of the claw it had been. Before it could bear down and strike her, Harribel dodged it in a burst of Sonido, only to come to a stop and find Gaara above her, his now staff-like Zanpakutou held above his head for a downward swing that she had to life her own Zanpakutou to block with a resounding clang noise.

As she blocked Gaara's attack the claw flew towards the air behind her trying to stab into her while she was busy with Gaara himself. Harribel tossed her Zanpakutou to the other hand and grabbed the pole-arm of Gaara, using her sword hand to swat away his tanuki claw only for it to disintegrate into sand again, 'Is it solid or isn't it?' She thought, and her answer came when the sand moved and grabbed a hold of her Zanpakutou arm.

"I apologize for this." Gaara said, getting her attention. He had taken one of his hands off of his own Zanpakutou and had it held out to the side as if he were reaching out to grab something, "Sabaku Sousou (Sand Waterfall Funeral)!" The sand around Harribel's hand imploded and crushed her arm in a rain of blood. Gaara was surprised when her eyes barely even registered the damage that she had taken, 'What a strong will to not even cry out at such an injury.'

Harribel was able to free her now useless arm that hung limp at her side and snatched her Zanpakutou before it could fall with her other arm that was still good, "I don't need both arms to defeat you. Why do you not fight at full strength?"

"Why don't you?" Gaara asked in return, his spearhead reforming on the tip of his staff where it had been originally, "My reason is simple. My Resurrección is too dangerous to use anywhere near populated areas or around those too weak to bear the amount of power it generates simply from its release. I would potentially harm my allies with it." Their conversation was cut short when Hidan's Reiatsu spiked over in the distance, "Oh. It looks like Hidan has returned."

Harribel narrowed her eyes in the indicated direction as that was where her Fracción had been dispatched. There were two towering powers coming from that direction that she was certain they wouldn't be able to handle, 'It seems our battle has come to an end for now.' She said before disappearing with a low booming noise.

XxX

(Rooftop of Naruto's Base)

Nel jumped around excitedly as she waited by her two 'brothers' Dondochakka and Pesche, "What's happenin', what's happenin'?" She asked excitedly.

All over the normally lifeless district, the power fluctuations of constant battle could be felt, "Um…" Pesche started, scratching his head, "There's a lot of fighting and… yeah. A lot of fighting."

"Cool!" Nel exclaimed, "Who's winnin'?"

Pesche waited a moment before answering confidently, "The stronger side of course! Yep! No question about that, the stronger people are totally winning right now!"

An arrogant sounding voice sounded behind them as someone floated down to the surface of the roof, "Well, well… Nelliel Tu Odelschwanck. To find you here of all places."

Pesche and Dondochakka turned around slowly to see the pink-haired Arrancar with glasses standing there smirking, "Szayel Aporro Granz."

"H-How do you know Nel's name?" Nel asked nervously, fully aware of how strong this individual was, just from his mere presence, "What do you want with Nel?"

Szayel looked at the crack in the mask on Nel's head and spoke, "Ah of course you wouldn't be able to remember anything as you are. The attack all those years ago gave you amnesia as well as took your power." A grin came over his face, "I did want to study such an effect back when it happened to you… and an opportunity like this won't just fall into my hands again. Come with me if you would my dear."

Dondochakka stood protectively in front of Nel, keeping Szayel away from her as best he could, "You won't touch any part of her you bastard!"

Szayel laughed at the attempt of the two other Arrancar protectors, "Do you really think you two can possibly keep me from taking Nelliel? It must be nice to be so delusional." All of a sudden he heard the door to the roof open up, prompting him to turn his head, "You?"

Naruto walked up the stairwell leading to the roof and stood there, staring at Szayel with a frown on his face, "Well we missed our flight, but I have to say that it was probably a good thing that Hidan can't drive for shit." His frown deepened thinking about the harrowing experience of being a passenger, "He crashed the car twenty miles outside of town. We weren't even halfway there yet." Naruto rubbed his neck and disappeared before delivering a crushing kick to Szayel that sent him flying off of the rooftop, "Anyway, I'm pissed. And seeing you try to pick on a cute little Arrancar like Nel pisses me off even more."

Szayel caught himself in the air and touched his lip where blood was flowing from. He angrily drew his Zanpakutou as he stared down at Naruto, "You were the reason I came here to begin with! Such an interesting rumor about you I've heard from Aizen-sama. You're supposed to be nothing more than a regular human and yet your Reiatsu is so intense at the moment. You're worth studying."

"Catch me if you can then." Naruto said, gesturing towards himself, "It's going to be harder than you think to take me alive."

"Alive… dead… it doesn't matter!" Szayel shrieked maniacally, "A body to study is a body to study!" He said as a Garganta opened as multiple other Arrancar poured out of it, "Now attack him my Fracción!" And they did, dropping from the sky around Naruto preparing to do such.

Naruto stood there, calmly counting them out on his fingers, having to use one hand twice to get them all counted before shrugging and cracking his neck, "Okay, here we go. Jinchuuriki-style." Naruto's body was then covered in the same dark flame looking chakra that he took on when he fought Ichigo's Hollow earlier, "Let's make this quick!" Naruto reached up with his arm and from it, the arm of a giant, made from his dark chakra stretched out into the air and grabbed all of them tightly, crushing them almost effortlessly. He looked back at Nel and her brothers, "Get off of the roof." And they wasted no time in doing just that, leaving Naruto to face Szayel alone.

Szayel cared not for the deaths of his underlings as a grin came over his face at the sight of Naruto, "What a glorious form. Such incredible power… What is its source? I need to know what this is! Tell me! An inferior being such as a human like you has no right claiming such power!"

Naruto looked up at the man as he began to rant madly about Naruto's power, "Well you say that like it was my choice. And the source of my power is a need to know basis. I don't feel like telling that to someone that's about to die here."

"Arrogant human." Szayel said as he held up his Zanpakutou, "Susure, Fornicaras (Sip, Lewd Concubine)." He said, activating his Resurrección as he swallowed the weapon. A glow then emitted from his mouth before his body began to swell up. Naruto made a step forward to take advantage, but Szayel's body then emitted spiritual energy that kept him back, obscuring his vision and keeping him back.

As Naruto found himself able to look upon Szayel again, he found that his appearance had changed. His lower body was a multitude of purple tentacles with his feet extending from the bottom. They were then covered by a dress looking garment. His upper body had on a tight grey shirt with white sleeves that had purple extensions flowing from them like tear drops. His Hollow mask took the form of a headdress on the sides of his head, extending across his forehead and under his eyes. The ends of his hair were purple as well, and his hands became white with the tips of his fingers becoming purple. His left eye gained purple line markings. On his back there were four large branch-looking structures with many red strands hanging from them.

"Take a look…" Szayel said after his transformation was complete, "Take a look at perfection."

Naruto stared at him and blinked once, "Okay… I've seen it. Now what?"

In response, Szayel released a large amount of black liquid from his body that flew at Naruto from upwards. Naruto's eyes widened as he didn't see how he was going to dodge that much liquid from above him, and not knowing what it was made him not want to risk being hit by it. Naruto flared up his chakra and produced a solid black orb around his body that disintegrated the liquid on contact.

When the orb disappeared it revealed that Naruto was no longer there, having left through a hole in the roof. Szayel's eyes widened and the red strands on his branches expanded to cover his body defensively just as Naruto attacked him from behind, holding a black sphere of chakra in his hand that expanded to twice his size, "Inton: Chou Odama Rasengan (Yin Release: Super Great Ball Spiraling Sphere)!"

Naruto slammed the jutsu into his enemy's body and around them a whirling torrent of black energy formed, impossible for anyone to see into, before Szayel exploded out of it, landing into the side of a building, his branches on his back destroyed, "Gah! What did you do! I blocked with my wings and my Hierro! How did that get through them both?"

Naruto's right arm was uncovered, without any of his chakra shroud over it for a moment until it covered his arm again, "That jutsu manipulated the shroud around my body into an attack, concentrated enough to plow through anything. This is the strongest, densest chakra in the entire world bar none. It can break through anything."

"I am the Octava Espada! The eighth strongest in Aizen-sama's army! In my Resurrección state you shouldn't be able to even come close to me!" With his wings destroyed, Szayel's greatest weapon was gone. If he couldn't catch Naruto in one of them and perform his technique he couldn't win, "You worthless peon!" He disappeared in a burst of Sonido and reappeared at Naruto's back with his hand in a knife-strike position, "Die!" He thrust it forward, fully expecting to pierce Naruto's chest only to find that he didn't get past his black chakra shroud, "What?"

"Someone as weak as you can't ever hope to get past my chakra shroud." Naruto instructed him, a tail extending from the shroud and grabbing a hold of Szayel tightly, "Now that I know who the enemy is, and now that I know that you're willing to destroy at the very least thousands to get what you want I don't have to hold back anymore. You remind me of someone from my past now that I think about it." He turned his head to the side, allowing Szayel to see him grinning manically, "I always wanted to do something like this to him."

'You won't finish me you fool.' Szayel thought to himself, 'My final technique can activate as long as you are touching me, and you are!' He tried to initiate it only to find that he could not, 'What? Why? He's grabbing me!' He then scrutinized the chakra shroud and gasped, "This isn't a part of your physical body at all is it? It's a part of your 'chakra' or whatever you call it!"

"Yep." Naruto said, "Because I really don't want to touch you, so I won't. Kaze no Yaiba (Blade of Wind)." From Naruto's fingertips, an invisible blade materialized in a gust and cut right through Szayel once. Naruto let his chakra shroud fade, turning him back to normal as Szayel's bifurcated body fell to the ground. Naruto stared at the two pieces of his body as he thought, "So he was number 8 was he? What number was that Harribel girl? And how strong are the other numbers?"

XxX

(Yoruichi vs. Tousen)

One would think that the lack of sight, smell, and sound would completely adversely affect someone in battle. Normally it would. It would affect a fighter that wasn't already somewhat trained in dealing with it. As the former leader of the Onmitsukidou, Yoruichi was trained to defend herself and even win battles without her sight. The lack of hearing and smell that came with Tousen's Bankai was a problem, but not one that she couldn't deal with.

She still had the feeling of touch. With as fast as she was, if she could feel when he might attack her she could avoid it. Yoruichi was far faster than Tousen. Thus she was able to survive the battle thus far, until she got lucky and unleashed a sweeping kick that nailed Tousen right in the stomach, 'Yes! Got you, you slippery sack of crap!' The dome then faded. Why, she had no clue. It was a glancing blow, but she'd be damned if she wasn't going to take advantage of it and finish things here. As she prepared to activate Shunkou she looked around to find Tousen back in the sky, "You're running away?"

"I forget, you can't sense anything while my Bankai is active." Tousen said as a Garganta opened, "I'm not going to tell you anything other than this isn't over Shihouin Yoruichi." He said that, but thought something to himself as he held back the internal injuries that Yoruichi's kick gave him, 'I wonder if Aizen-sama is willing to bestow a power on me greater than my Bankai…'

Yoruichi took a moment to sense things around her and found that Naruto and Hidan's signatures were back in Karakura Town. As the sky closed on Tousen, she narrowed her eyes at him and nursed her numerous cuts, 'You're damn right this isn't over… We never even got started.'

XxX

Hidan held his scythe in his hand and looked at the three female Arrancar that he had been familiar with before tonight, "Hey Shinigami kid." He said, addressing Ichigo, "Do you mind if I take all three of them myself. We've got something of a thing going on… besides, I've got something I want to test out." He grabbed the pike that hung around his neck and extended it, pointing at his chest, "My Resurrección…"

'He's going to use his Resurrección?' Sung-Sun, Mila Rose, and Apacci thought at the same time.

Ichigo scratched his head in confusion as he and all of his friends looked up at Hidan as he asked a question, "Um sure… but what's a Resurr- whatever you called it?"

Hidan rolled his eyes, "My actual true power you stupid brat, keep up!" He shouted before Harribel appeared behind him. As a reflex, Hidan turned around with a wild swing of his scythe, only to miss as Harribel dodged him with her Sonido to get to her underlings, "Oh no you didn't bitch! No one creeps up on me, doesn't stab me for the trouble, and just walks away!"

Sung-Sun looked and Harribel's wound with her hand in front of her mouth out of shock, "Harribel-sama, your arm."

"A wound that can be treated once we return to Hueco Mundo." Harribel insisted stoically, "It's time for us to return."

"So soon Harribel-chan?" Naruto appeared in the sky next to Hidan, using his Swift Release to get there quickly, "We never got to talk. That's kind of disappointing." He said with his arms crossed. Hidan tried to step forward when Naruto's command stopped him, "Down boy." Gaara appeared then also.

"I didn't get to fight!" Hidan said indignantly, "Come on, what the fuck!"

Naruto then narrowed his eyes at him, "You flipped the damn car over the median! You're lucky I didn't kick your ass all the way back to Karakura Town! The only thing that saved you was that we had to run from the cops! Too many questions to answer for a car that wasn't even registered under my name…"

Hidan retreated back a few feet. He wasn't in his Gigai. Naruto could kill him as he was like this, "Nevermind then."

"Until next time Uzumaki Naruto." Harribel said, "You're as much of a threat as we considered you. You and your allies." With that a Garganta opened and the Espada and her Fracción stepped through it.

Naruto watched the portal close and let out a sigh, looking around the somewhat wrecked area, but who cared? No one came around there except him anyway, "Well, that's a good job dream team." He said in reference to Gaara and Hidan. He descended and landed, very close to Tatsuki as a matter of fact, getting her to step back, "Did you hit Gaara?"

Tatsuki's face took on one of shock. She completely forgot about the test once Gaara left. They had been fighting for three hours and she hadn't managed to hit him. Looking down at the ground, she shook her head, unable to look up at him, "No… I guess it's back to the beginner stuff huh?"

Naruto just looked at her before looking over at Gaara, "She didn't hit you?" Gaara shook his head, "Hmm… well what about the test part of the exercise?"

Gaara ignored the look of confusion on Tatsuki's face and walked up to Naruto, "Tatsuki fought against the enemy with only the skills you've given her thus far, she did not retreat. In our battle she did the same. She never gave up or faltered, she would have kept going if we weren't alerted to the presence of Aizen's soldiers."

Naruto nodded as he took in this information, "Well Tatsuki… in that case if Gaara says so then you pass."

"What?" Tatsuki said with a blank look on her face, not understanding why he was passing her, "But I didn't hit him. I never even got close to Gaara, so how can you say I passed?"

"Because you were never meant to actually hit Gaara." Naruto said as if it were as plain as day.

Ichigo still didn't understand. The test seemed clear. There didn't seem to be any in-between point for hitting Gaara or not hitting him. If Tatsuki didn't get it done then why was she being passed? It was weird, "What do you mean? You just said that her test was to hit Gaara. You're a confusing guy Naruto."

Naruto chuckled, "I gave her an impossible task." At seeing the shock on everyone's face, he elaborated, "Do you all know how hard it is to lay a single finger on Gaara if he doesn't want you to? Only the fastest, the strongest, or someone with a hell of a lot of tricks to their credit can get past his sand shield when he's in his Gigai." He lifted his fingers and started listing things, "Tatsuki, for as good as she is isn't fast enough to get around it, she isn't strong enough to brute force her way through it, and I only taught her the most basic ninjutsu in existence, none of which are going to fool Gaara on his worst day or give her enough of an opening to touch him."

Orihime was lost… way back at the point when Naruto said that Tatsuki passed, "So… what was the point of the test?"

Naruto put a hand on Tatsuki's shoulder, "If you had thought that it was impossible, if you had quit before Gaara told you to stop, then I couldn't have trained you any further. That was all to make sure you had enough drive to keep going when my training got hard, and if you didn't then at least you would have a few tricks that might keep you alive if you were attacked." His face was serious as he spoke, "Tatsuki-chan I can work with pretty much anything. I'll be able to make you stronger no matter how good you are or how good you aren't, but the thing that I absolutely can't do anything with is someone that's a quitter. You need guts to do the things we're going to have you doing."

And there it was. The point of the test wasn't a measure of her skill, it was a measure of her determination. Complaining about how unfair it was, or giving up in the middle of the test would have resulted in her failure. It was as simple as that.

"So…" Tatsuki said hopefully.

"Like I said, you pass." Naruto said with a grin on his face, "And per the agreement you get a new jutsu… Gaara?" He said, expecting Gaara to toss her the scroll he had placed the jutsu on.

Gaara shrugged and gestured to his clothing, "The scroll is in my Gigai, not with me Naruto."

Naruto deflated, the flow of the moment broken up, "Oh well… you can give it to her once you get back inside. Me and Hidan need to get going."

"Why?" Ichigo asked. They had just gotten back and now he was going to leave again.

Hidan looked away sheepishly while Naruto glared at him and answered the Substitute Shinigami, "Because of _someone's_ shitty driving we missed our flight, so we have to leave now and get to the airport to get tickets for the next flight out and to make sure we don't miss _that_ flight too." His glare deepened as Hidan hid behind Gaara, "_I'm_ driving this time." He asserted with a growl.

XxX

Yoruichi sat on the roof of a building as Urahara sat behind her bandaging the wounds she suffered in her fight with Tousen. Urahara grinned widely as he finished the job, "So you're not going to go get a quickie from your boyfriend before he leaves again?" He tried to tease.

Yoruichi just smirked in response, not even bothering to turn around, "Please… Naruto's going to leave as fast as he can. And there's really no such thing as a quickie for us. If we started, we wouldn't stop for the rest of the night." She then let out a sigh, "And then he'd be late to get back from where he's going. He would miss more than Monday's classes if we did that."

"So responsible aren't you Yoruichi?" Urahara snickered before getting serious, "So what do you think?"

Yoruichi looked up at the sky, ignoring the moon to look at the area where the Garganta had been opened not too long ago, "I think we've got a hell of a lot of work to do. They struck back the same way that we did. They know that they can get to us just as easily as we can get to them, _and_ we're all by ourselves. You have to wonder how quick the Seireitei's response would be in the case of an all-out attack against us."

"Ooh." Urahara said in interest, "I smell a field trip! Too bad I can't go though… but I guess there are things I can do here as well so don't worry about me."

Yoruichi let out a laugh, "I never do Kisuke. You know that."

* * *

Omake: Immortals Like Us

(Two Days After Leaving Karakura Town)

Naruto and Hidan were resting atop a cliff in an extremely arid environment, with the silver-haired man holding a pair of binoculars to his eyes. Both of them were wearing desert camouflaged clothing and had automatic rifles on their persons, "Why are we here Uzumaki-brat? This seems pointless to me."

Naruto, who was sitting back relaxing in preparation for what they were about to do in mere moments, eyed Hidan with a raised brow, "What part of 50 million American dollars seems pointless? Calm down, this'll be over in all of five minutes. My clones, plus the fact that you can't die in that body will make sure of that. I've been meaning to knock this guy off for like ten years."

"Why the fuck didn't you get around to it sooner then?" Hidan asked him irritably. He hated desert environments, and having to actually work in one left him crankier than usual, "You don't even fucking need me for this."

Naruto shrugged his shoulders, "I just never got around to it. I was going to let the country he fucked with get him, but it's been ten years, that means it's my turn. And I don't need you, but we were in the neighborhood so I figured why not get some easy money while we're here? It's not like these people are shinobi, and the closest thing to a shinobi around here is that military academy we saw. We'll be done by the time they figure out what's up." He pulled the rifle from his back and switched the safety up, "Now saddle up asshole, we have a flight to catch tonight."

Hidan sighed and did the same as Naruto, frowning at the noisy weapon, "Why can't I just use my scythe?"

Naruto shook his head, "Too many questions to answer, such as; how the fuck did you get close enough to that guy to fuck him up with a scythe? Besides, we need his body in good enough condition to be identified, otherwise we ain't getting paid. Just point and shoot dumbass, a monkey could use these things"

Hidan then smirked, "Hence why after thousands of years you're finally acceptable at using them." Feeling satisfied at Naruto's growl he brought up another point, "Yoruichi's going to be pissed off when she finds out why we're late."

"She's not going to find out we even did this because you're not going to tell her, and neither is anyone else." Naruto commented, confident in that fact, "You're going to walk in there, be my human bullet-shield, shoot your gun, meanwhile while you miss every shot because you suck I'll be hitting them and eventually I'll empty a clip through the target's chest and we can go home 50 million dollars richer."

Hidan nodded, cocking his gun before smiling faintly, "Kami, it feels good to do this again. Not with the guns because I hate these stupid things…" Naruto nodded in agreement of their distaste in guns, "…But just _this_ you know?" He then shook his good mood off and put the sneer back on his face, "Alright, enough sentimental bullshit, let's do this."

"Alright remember the plan." Naruto said, "You go in towards the front and raise hell. I'll go through the back and they'll be screwed. I can understand their language anyway, you can't, so I can hear how they're going to respond to whatever you do."

"Where the fuck are we anyway?" Hidan asked as they started descending the cliff towards a small community of well-to-do compounds.

"Pakistan." Naruto said absently, "Abbottabad I think this place is called."

"Do I have to take this Bin Laden guy alive?" Hidan asked again, hoping for a response in the negative.

Naruto picked his ear before flicking it and pulling a balaclava over his face, "I don't care. We get paid alive or dead. Now lock and load dickhead."

* * *

**Chapter done chumps. Read up. (I really didn't mean that chump thing. My arrogance is back on the upswing in case you didn't know.) Rargh!**

**Anyway, hope you enjoyed… blah blah blah… same shit I say all of the time. You all know the drill by now, you probably read it three times this week alone.**

**Later. Kenchi out.**


	17. Pick Your Poison

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. I offer the owner of either franchise my right hand in return for the rights and everything that comes with them. I don't need both of my hands anyway, I'll just get a hook or something. Maybe I'll set it up like Hoss Delgado, and for those of you that got that reference I don't know what to say other than bravo.

**Chapter 17: Pick Your Poison**

* * *

In a lab-like setting inside of Urahara Kisuke's shop, the man himself was seemingly going over the compounded information on Arrancar that he had gotten before the death of the Octava Espada Szayel Aporro Granz with Tessai at his side and Yoruichi nearby watching as well, "Yep… It's just as I thought." He said with confident finality.

"What is it?" Yoruichi said, snapping out of her trance of sorts. She had been there for over an hour. Her boredom due to Naruto and Hidan being gone on their worldwide excursion for another set of Naruto's possessions and the fact that Gaara and the new recruits of their little group were all at school led to her coming over to Urahara's place. She could have stayed at the base with the other Arrancar that were insistent on staying with them after seeing Naruto destroy an Espada, but they would have driven her insane, "Did you find out something new to use against them?"

Urahara merely grinned and turned from his desk towards his longtime friend, "Nope! But seriously, Naruto couldn't have left any of that guy he killed or any of his underlings? I mean talk about going overboard." He chalked up another mental victory to himself when he saw Yoruichi facepalm. It made him feel good that he could still get under the skin of such a close friend.

Yoruichi let out a sigh as she removed her hand from her face, "Well we're supposed to be going to the Soul Society soon. Naruto and I are supposed to go, if Hidan or Gaara went then I don't want to think about the problems that would probably cause." Well Gaara might be able to move about in the Soul Society without being bothered as long as she and Naruto vouched for him… Hidan wouldn't as he would get himself into all kinds of trouble, "So they're staying behind in case anyone needs their help or in case another attack happens. Because _someone_ never seems to fight unless there's no other option." She said, finishing with a glare at Urahara.

Said man simply opened his fan and hid his face with it, "Why would the brains of the operation want to get involved with the fights when there's so much splendid muscle around to do the fighting for him?" He said with a certain glee at attempting to earn Yoruichi's ire, "Besides Yoruichi I think all the workouts have been doing you good because before you started fighting again you were looking a little out of-."

"Shut up right now." Yoruichi said with a deceptive pleasantness in her voice and a sweet smile on her face, "Because if you think I'm out of shape what would that make you?"

By now Tessai had long since vacated the lab.

"Now Yoruichi…" Urahara reasoned, trying to beg off. Maybe he went a step too far in his teasing? Obviously he did because every step he took backwards was followed by a step forward from Yoruichi, "There's all kinds of delicate equipment in here. You don't want to risk destroying any of that would you?" He breathed out a sigh of relief when he saw Yoruichi stop moving towards him.

She then vanished behind him in a Shunpo and held a tight grip on his shoulder as she began to lead him out of the room, smile still on her face, "You're right Kisuke. It's a good thing that you have that roomy training space downstairs isn't it?"

Jinta and Ururu watched Urahara get dragged through the house, a mortified look on his face. Ururu turned to Tessai who made it none of his business, "Is Yoruichi-san going to hurt Mr. Urahara?" She asked meekly.

"Nope." Urahara answered for himself, grinning madly. He pointed in the direction that Yoruichi had stalked off in, "Yoruichi's got one of my decoy Gigai-."

"Oh Kisuke…" Yoruichi yelled through the house in a sing-song voice, "I found your little copy can't really take a punch, you're way more durable."

"-And she's not getting me." Urahara finished before taking off running out of his house, "Man I wish I knew how to do that log thing that Naruto can do!"

XxX

(Karakura High School)

Ichigo, Chad, Uryuu, Orihime, and Tatsuki sat on the roof during lunchtime talking about the events that had occurred recently, "So those were the Arrancar guys that Naruto warned us about." Ichigo said with a frown on his face, "They were just as strong as he said they were, especially that one blonde woman." He mused, referring to Harribel. Naruto really wasn't joking about the new threat at hand. Aizen hadn't just been sitting idle and hiding clearly.

Tatsuki on the other hand, instead of being nervous was more raring to go than ever, "I want Naruto-sensei to get back so I can learn more stuff. I didn't have enough knockout power to fight those things very well at all."

"You still did really good though Tatsuki-chan!" Orihime insisted cheerfully, "You almost got that one that attacked us. If the others hadn't been there you definitely would have kicked her butt."

Uryuu didn't know why he was there. Ever since he had lost his Quincy powers in his battle against Kurotsuchi Mayuri in the Seireitei he wasn't of any use to anyone in battle. Still his viewpoint on the matter might still have been valid enough to contribute, "Ichigo you said Naruto had a way for you to train and get stronger. Why don't you take him up on it? It's clear he's fighting the same enemies that we are so there would be no advantage for him to lead you astray."

Naruto kicked his butt during Ichigo's little test of his character, and he had revealed that he had still been holding back since when he fought the Arrancar that attacked Ichigo felt a stronger Reiatsu from Naruto than he had ever felt before. It was staggering. Naruto didn't seem to be the kind of guy to manipulate people into what he wanted them to do. He was more of the type to tell you what you needed to do and then beat it into your head until you did it. It was way more straightforward that Urahara's mind games. Why did he trust Urahara more again?

Chad took Ichigo's silence as his chance to speak up, "I really think you should Ichigo. You're the strongest out of all of us. If anyone can help in this fight it's you." The large boy of Mexican heritage then made another point, "I won't just be sitting back either. I need to get stronger too."

Hearing about how everyone was going to take Naruto's offer for help or whatever he had offered them put a tick mark on Tatsuki's head, "Now wait a minute. You're all going to Naruto-sensei for training? That's not fair, you all have powers of your own, I don't have anything. And you want him to teach you how to do more stuff? All I can do is make fake copies of myself, switch places with stuff and turn into other people!"

"Basics kill Tatsuki-chan."

Everyone turned their heads to see Naruto standing on the top of the fence surrounding the rooftop, "Naruto!" They all said, not even sensing his presence as he snuck up on them so thoroughly.

"Yes, me." Naruto said before hopping down onto the rooftop, "I'm back from the lands of shifting sands and I come bearing gifts for my cute little female student."

"How'd you get up here without anyone noticing you?" Uryuu asked calmly.

"Ninja." Naruto said with a deadpan look on his face, "I thought we went over this already. I told you guys a million times already."

Tatsuki meanwhile, couldn't have cared any less about where the topic of the conversation was going. All she heard was Naruto's opening statement and that was all she needed to hear as far as she had been concerned, "Who cares about how he got up here? He said he had a present! What kind of present did you get me? Is it good? Come on Naruto-sensei what'd you bring me?" She asked, getting up in his face over the matter, excited at the prospect of getting something cool.

Naruto held back a chuckle at her exuberance, "Calm down Tatsuki-chan. I got you something good since you don't really like swords or anything and everyone you fight is probably going to have some kind of weapon." He saw her brown eyes light up simply thinking about it, "Check it out." He said, pulling out a scroll and summoning a weapon in a puff of smoke. As the smoke cleared, in Naruto's hands he held a pair of blades that looked like brass knuckles with a sharp tooth-like blade at the ends of them, "Say hello to the trench knives!" Tatsuki squealed in delight and took them from him, trying them on and giving a few test punches.

Ichigo just stared at his childhood friend in shock, "Did Tatsuki just squeal? I've never heard her make that sound in ten years of knowing her. Not even once."

"Ringtone." Naruto said, holding up his cell phone before playing back the recorded sound of Tatsuki squealing happily, "Or maybe I should make it my text message noise? Yeah, because when people call to talk to me directly it's usually about something bad. This is a happy noise."

Tatsuki stopped in the middle of marveling over her new weapons to turn and glare heatedly at Naruto, catching wind of what he was saying, "Delete it sensei." There was no way she'd let any sign of her making that damn noise leave this rooftop. She had a reputation to keep.

"Nope." Naruto replied in amusement, "Now give me the trench knives back." He raised an eyebrow when he she turned around, keeping them away from him while she stuck her tongue out, "You can't carry weapons around for the rest of the day Tatsuki-chan."

She scoffed and stuck one of her hands out expectantly, "Yes I can. Give me that scroll you sealed them up in. I know how to use it to get the trench knives out." Naruto tossed her the scroll and she showed that she truly was a quick study when it came to learning what Naruto had to teach her. She was picking up the basics extremely quick, but he assumed that already having a combat base got her used to learning new things like this, "There you go. I showed you didn't I?" Tatsuki said, holding up the scroll with her new weapons sealed inside.

Naruto rolled his eyes, "Whatever. All that shows is that I'm the greatest teacher you've ever had." He turned to the others on the rooftop, "So bow down to Uzumaki Naruto's greatness!" He said in a grand gesturing pose.

"I'd rather not." Ichigo said with a dry look on his face, 'Seriously. This was the guy that beat my berserk Inner Hollow's ass? I definitely need that training.' With that in mind Ichigo raised his hand lamely, "Uh hey. About that training you said I could have."

Naruto cut him off with a wave of his hand, "Yeah, yeah, I'll take you there right after school's over with. You'd better be ready though." With that, Naruto jumped back onto the fence of the roof, "Alright I'll see you guys later. Tatsuki we're training like usual today and like usual everyone else is invited, though I might be a bit late with getting Wonderboy all set up to get his ass kicked." He then stopped abruptly before realizing what he said, "Forget that last thing-. Actually, you can go ahead and remember it since you _are_ going to get your ass kicked. You knowing about it isn't going to change a thing."

"Wait!" Orihime stopped him before he could jump off of the roof, "You aren't going to class?"

Naruto shook his head, "No way, I already missed more than half of the day and I snuck up here. I'm not going in there to get chewed out by a woman one-hundredth of my age. Later." With that he finally jumped off leaving the teens behind, "School is for chumps!"

They all stood in silence before Chad stood up, "I'm glad I met Naruto… because he actually makes me feel normal compared to him."

XxX

(Naruto's Base)

Gaara was notoriously the most even tempered man that most people would ever meet. In his youth he was quick to anger, and with that anger he would kill anyone that looked at him wrong, but now he was a docile as a kitten unless you were trying to kill him, and even then an enemy would get some kind of mercy from him.

But the next time Naruto went on a long excursion of some sort he was definitely going. The reason being that the three strange Arrancar that they were now putting up were driving him insane. Although he was the only one that could have put up with them from Friday to Tuesday, Hidan would have probably killed them by then.

The former shinobi was sitting in the training facility with sand wrapped around Dondochakka, Pesche, and even little Nel, "I think that we should install some plant life in here. It looks far too much like Urahara-san's training facility for my liking. What do you all think?" He asked the group of captured Arrancar in his grasp. They couldn't answer however due to the fact that he had made sure to cover their mouths with the sand.

"Sand-rat are you down here?" Hidan's loud boisterous voice rang out through the training space. He and Naruto must have returned from wherever it was that they had gone. Whatever they had done must have put Hidan in a good mood.

"Yes I am Hidan." Gaara said, letting go of his captives since he was sure that being held by sand for an hour taught them to be more quiet in his presence. He could only take so much yelling and shenanigans and he had been dealing with them for the entire weekend, "Did you all learn a lesson from this?" He asked, getting unanimous nods from them, "Good."

Hidan then appeared on the scene holding a massive calabash shaped gourd, a huge grin on his face, "Check it out! Uzumaki said this thing is yours. It's fucking huge!"

For the first time in quite a while, Gaara had an expression of pure surprise on his face. That was his gourd from when he was a ninja, "Is this what you and Naruto left to go find? My gourd?"

"Hell yeah." Hidan said, walking over to Gaara and setting the gourd on the ground, "He even dropped it over at Urahara's to make it so you could get out of your Gigai with it instead of waiting for Uzumaki or someone else to pull you out of it." He pointed at the cork at the top of the gourd that was now emblazoned with a skull marking, the same marking on Hidan's cylindrical container for his pike.

Gaara liked it. He could keep much more sand with him stored inside of his gourd when he needed to use his Gigai to keep a cover and he could take it to school with him, claiming it to be a gift from a relative's trip abroad or something. He could come up with a good cover story of why he would lug it around.

Hidan walked around Gaara as he wordlessly marveled over his returned gourd, "Oh that trip was so awesome. It was in the desert and I hate the desert, but when we got to Uzumaki's little hiding place it was fucking incredible. Triple-layered booby traps and all of that shit, and when we got to his actual armory the place was so fucking stocked up full of stuff." He then looked over at the three other Arrancar in the room, "Yeah, what are you guys still doing here?"

"We live here now!" Pesche said joyfully before realizing that was the wrong answer once Hidan began radiating killing intent, "I mean, we're staying here until things clear up in Hueco Mundo." He finished with a nervous laugh.

Hidan nodded tensely, "That's what I thought you said."

At that time, Naruto wound up walking downstairs eating a sandwich, "Hidan stop bullying people that you know you can kill." Naruto said in a chiding manner as he polished off his snack, "You saw those guys we fought the other day. How do you think they'll survive in Hueco Mundo with Aizen turning every Arrancar into his own private army? That guy Szayel Aporro almost tried to take them right then." He then felt a tiny weight slam into his legs and disrupt his balance.

"But you saved us Naruto-aniki!" Nel said, holding on tightly to Naruto's legs in a hug, "Naruto-aniki can probably beat anybody if he beat an Espada like that!"

Naruto rubbed the back of his head sheepishly, "Well I don't know about tha-. Actually yeah… there's no need to be modest here. I'm the greatest." He then began to laugh in a manner reminiscent of Jiraiya as he picked up Nel and put her on his shoulders much to her enjoyment.

Hidan stared at Naruto with a twitching eye, "Uzumaki we are not running a halfway house here. You're going to let these guys stay here? Look at them! They stick out like sore thumbs and what in the hell can they do that's actually useful? So far all they've done is work our nerves and almost get killed!"

Gaara appeared at Hidan's side and decided to interject, "I believe it has been proven that they serve as excellent bait for allowing us to attack our opponents off-guard… but that may be a little too cruel of a fate for them. Thank you for returning my gourd by the way." He finished, in gratitude to Naruto for the painstakenly achieved gift.

"Hey!" Dondochakka protested vehemently, "We're not useless don'tcha know! We've got tons of information on stuff in Hueco Mundo that you guys don't have any clue about!"

That got Naruto, Gaara, and Hidan's full undivided attention. Naruto and Hidan both knew nothing about the place, and any kind of insight Gaara had was _way_ outdated. If Dondochakka wasn't full of hot air then something like that had the potential to be incredibly valuable. Next time they went in they wouldn't just be wandering about blindly. Hell if they had good enough knowledge on the place maybe they could make a rudimentary map or something? The possibilities with something like this were huge.

Naruto then turned to Hidan with Nel still on his shoulders, "And this is why we are good people to everyone we meet Hidan." Naruto said in a lecturing voice as Nel nodded atop his head, "Not just because sometimes it's just the right thing to do, but because sometimes the people we help wind up being useful somehow. Check it out, we've got scouts!" He then took Nel off his shoulders and held her out, "_And_ a cute little mascot! Now that's what I call winning time!" Nel laughed from Naruto's outstretched arms and kept repeating 'winning time'.

"You're a total bleeding heart Uzumaki, I swear." Hidan said in defeat. If Naruto wasn't for kicking them out then the fact of the matter was that they weren't going anywhere. He then found Nel shoved into his arms, "What the hell's this?"

"I need to go grab Wonderboy and drop him off at his babysitters'." Naruto said referencing Ichigo's intended training with the Visoreds, "I'll be back a little bit later, make sure Tatsuki gets warmed up by the time I get back Gaara, and Hidan take them to Urahara's place. That lazy bum is going to work as long as he's on this team." He then left the room in a whirlwind of leaves marking where he had been.

"You want me to go now?" Hidan asked incredulously as he already knew that the answer was yes. Sometimes he wished Naruto had just left him in that cursed forest he plucked him out of because he hated his new boss. He held Nel up to eye level and gave her a dry look, "S'up." Nel then proceeded to tear up and start to cry, "Jashin-sama I hate my job so much…" He looked over at Gaara with a glare, "You're just loving this aren't you?"

Gaara shrugged his shoulders as he picked up his gourd to take upstairs in order to prepare it for easier transport, "Consider it karma for trying so hard to kill us 2000 years ago."

XxX

(Outside of the Visoreds Hideout)

Naruto stood out front of the warehouse the blonde had come to identify as the housing situation of some of his friends, Ichigo who was already in Shinigami-mode at his side looking at the building curiously, "Well this is it Wonderboy. Your first step to becoming more awesome." Naruto said, gesturing to the building.

"Really?" Ichigo asked, tilting his head to the side as if he would see something he was missing with a different angle, "I can't sense anything inside."

"Did you sense anything inside of Urahara's little shop when you first went in there?" Naruto asked in response.

Ichigo's brow furrowed as he nodded in agreement, "Hm, good point." He clapped his hands together, ready to get started, "Alright I'm ready, let's do this!" He then found a crumpled little sheet of paper in front of his face. It looked kind of aged, and was that blood he saw on it? Some parts were scratched out and in a certain place his name was written in his place on a part of it, "What's this?"

"It's the secret password you need to get in." Naruto said with a massive mischievous grin on his face that Ichigo didn't see because he was reading, "Just say that phrase as loud as you possibly can and the doors will open so that you can start training." Naruto took a massive step away from Ichigo, "Go ahead."

Ichigo raised an eyebrow but did as Naruto asked, "My name is Kurosaki Ichigo and I've come to kick some Shinigami-reject ass! Please line up single file and I promise it will be quick and exact!" He then turned towards Naruto questioningly, "What the hell is this, a password or a challenge?"

Naruto's grin could have split his face, "That's exactly what I said when I read it and the thing is, it's a beautiful combination of both." The large door to the warehouse cracked open at that moment, "Here we g-." And a sandal flew out and slapped Naruto in the face. This was followed by Hiyori jumping out and kicking him in the face.

Ichigo watched as the tiny blonde girl proceeded to stomp a mudhole in the strongest guy he had ever met repeatedly. Ichigo felt the need to step in as he was sure that it wasn't healthy for someone to eat that much pavement, "Um hey…" He then froze as Hiyori sent a heated glare his way before returning her attention to Naruto, "Nevermind, I'll just wait…"

She grabbed the bloody Naruto by his collar and jerked him to eye level. At this point, Naruto recovered and growled angrily at her, "And what was that all about you damn pygmy? He was the one that said it, not me! Kick _his_ ass!"

"You made him say it dumbass!" Hiyori snapped back at him before the two butted heads and growled at one another, "I'm not stupid, that was word for word what you said when we first met!"

"I'm going to have to show you some manners aren't I? How to Be a Gracious Host 101, a.k.a. Remedial Kickass!"

"Anytime you dandelion-headed bastard!"

Ichigo raised a hand and tried to interject, "Hey about my-."

"Shut up and wait, we're busy!" Naruto and Hiyori both yelled at Ichigo before returning to fighting with each other, this time each fish-hooking the other's mouth.

With nothing to do other than watch a 2000 plus year old man act like a child, Ichigo did just that until a blonde man wearing a dress shirt and tie as well as a newsboy cap walked up next to Ichigo and began watching the scene with him, "So how long's it been since they started?" Ichigo just shook his head, basically saying that he didn't know, "It's okay, I know how to stop it." He then spoke loudly so that Hiyori and Naruto would hear him, "Man the way you two fight I'm sure the sex must be outrageous!"

And that stopped everything without fail. Naruto, currently on his back, was holding Hiyori in the air at arm's length as she scratched away on his face from above. Naruto and Hiyori both looked over at Shinji before looking back at each other, Naruto grinning up at her with scratch marks that were healing steadily on his face and Hiyori fuming at what was just said out loud.

Naruto simply tossed her high into the air, ignoring her screaming, and kipped back up to his feet before catching her and tucking her under his shoulder to walk inside the warehouse, Hiyori cursing Naruto the entire way, "Well Wonderboy are you coming or what?"

Ichigo just stared owlishly as Shinji put an arm around his shoulder and led him inside the building as well, "Come on in Ichigo. Naruto's told us all about you and we think we can help you with your problem." Ichigo was too stunned to offer a rebuttal of any kind or to even get the arm off of him.

Whoever said that he needed to expand his horizon of friends needed to be taken out back and shot for that shoddy advice.

XxX

Fifteen minutes later after introductions were made and it was explained what Ichigo's Inner Hollow really was, as well as the problems that could and would occur if Ichigo didn't undertake the training, Shinji had to say that Ichigo was taking things far better than he assumed the boy would. Though this was mostly because Naruto physically beat it into him beforehand.

"So let me get this straight." Ichigo said, sitting in a chair in the middle of the warehouse as the rest of the Visoreds lounged around doing what they normally did when Naruto wasn't there or they didn't have pressing issues to attend to, "You all have Hollows like me except you can use them without worrying about them taking over your body."

Love was the first to chime in, looking up from his manga for a moment to give Ichigo the a-ok sign, "You got it man."

With that positive affirmation given, Ichigo continued, "You're also saying that if I master it I'll get a massive power boost that can go toe-to-toe with even Naruto one-on-one."

"No." Naruto said with an amused snort before being contradicted by every other Visored in the room with a resounding yes, "Don't give the guy false hope like that. And by the way I never fight one-on-one."

"_But_." Ichigo said, stressing the opposite of his previously stated scenario greatly, "If I _don't_ learn how to get my Hollow under control then I'll end up killing everyone that I care about when the thing takes over my body the next time I feel stressed out in a fight."

Shinji nodded, glad that Ichigo had gotten the breadth of his situation, "Yes, that's right. But don't worry, we have an entire training program mapped out just for you so that we know how to help you out! Hiyori if you would."

Hiyori stood in front of something with a tarp over it and opened her mouth to begin talking when Naruto cut her off from his place in the balcony, "Oh for fuck's sake just forget the stupid exercise bike! If you make him get on that thing we're all going to be here for three days!" He then had said exercise bike thrown all the way across the room at him, tarp and all crashing into his body.

"You're just begging me to kick your ass aren't you?" Hiyori threatened up at Naruto before she suddenly found the exercise bike flying back through the air at her. She let out a shriek and quickly moved to the side to dodge before looking back up at the balcony and preparing to taunt Naruto's lousy aim until she saw him flying through the air to deliver a tackle that started their fight all over again.

Shinji sighed and went over to the poor exercise bike, flipping it right side up, "Well Ichigo, since Naruto told us and showed us that your Inner Hollow is just as strong as ours this is the first thing we're going to do for your training." He then turned to the others, "Will someone break them up and kick Naruto out so we can get started?"

Lisa looked up at the fight and watched as at this point Naruto had the Raijin no Ken out and was trading sword strikes with Hiyori's sealed Zanpakutou, "I don't feel like getting in between a Jedi and his fight."

XxX

(Later That Afternoon – Naruto's Base)

"So you want to improve upon the destructive powers that you already possess?" A stoic Gaara said, complete with his gourd on his back. As was Gaara's way the gourd was full of sand, but he could also put his books inside when he went to school. If anyone had a problem with it well too bad for them. A stare from Gaara could shut up just about anyone after a few seconds of him looking at them without blinking.

"Yes." Chad said, his super-powered arm already out and ready for action, "I learned in the Soul Society that I'm not strong enough to help Ichigo against stronger enemies. I'd like to get stronger so that I can be helpful to him in the future." Gaara couldn't see past the large teen's brown bangs, but he could feel the hard eyes of Chad from where he was standing, "Against the strongest of our new enemies I wouldn't be any help at all right now."

"I see." Gaara said before walking a distance away from Chad, kneeling down to touch to hard ground before standing back up and facing Chad, the cork of his sand popping off as it started flowing out freely, grinding a hole into the ground. Chad prepared to attack, believing that they were about to spar when Gaara stopped him, "We're not going to fight. Instead I want you to do something else for me. I guarantee that it will help you more than actual battle will at this point."

Skeptical at first, Chad decided that he could at least see what Gaara had to offer since the only idea he had was to fight someone stronger than himself to grow in strength, "Alright. I'll do what you ask of me."

Gaara nodded and made a ram seal to build his chakra. After a moment the ground began to shake, alarming Chad into a ready stance in case of a battle. Instead of an attack to begin a battle however, from the ground emerged a figure three times Gaara's size, "Saikou Zettai Bougyo: Shukaku no Tate (Ultimately Hard Absolute Defense: Shield of Shukaku)." The massive figure was made of tightly packed minerals, arms outstretched as it stood protectively in front of Gaara, "Break this with all of your strength. When you are able to do so you'll have grown significantly in strength."

Allowing Gaara time to move out of the way so that he didn't run the risk of taking any part of the attacks, Chad flexed the fingers of his powerful right arm before making a tight fist and unleashing a powerful energy blast directly at Gaara's shield, hitting it directly. As the smoke cleared from the blast, Chad stood with a small sweat going down his face, "Okay… this might be harder than I thought." He said as there was barely a scratch on Gaara's shield.

XxX

Upon his return to the base, Naruto found Tatsuki going through her katas with her brand new trench knives to get accustomed to them. Naruto took Tatsuki to the back of the office building while Chad was inside working on his attack power by trying to find some way to break through Gaara's strongest sand shield. She wondered why Naruto insisted on having Orihime there as well, "Naruto-sensei why are we out here instead of inside? Won't someone see us if we train out here?"

Naruto shook his head, "There's no one around for miles and you aren't going to be using so much power that others will be able to sense it for this. This exercise is all about control Tatsuki-chan. You're going to learn the bane of my youth, the tree-walking exercise." Naruto demonstrated by walking directly up the side of the building.

Tatsuki's eyes lit up for the second time that day, "How do I do it?"

Putting his hands in the ram seal for a demonstration, Naruto explained, "Build your chakra around your feet. Once you've done that you're going to run up the wall and go as high as you can. You're going to be running at first so that your momentum can help you get higher." He then dropped from the ground and took her trench knives from her before throwing them up into the wall five stories up.

Orihime looked with a shocked expression on her face while Tatsuki looked at Naruto as if he had just kicked her puppy, "Naruto what did you do that for? That was so mean!" She said in her best lecturing voice.

Naruto couldn't help but chuckle at the cute pout on Orihime's face, "Whoops, my fingers slipped." He then saw Tatsuki turn her head towards him in a robotic manner with murder in her eyes, "It's incentive to get the training faster!" Naruto defended, jumping up on the wall in case she tried to attack him, "You can have them back when you can get up there. It's as simple as that."

"You can't just give someone a gift and then take the gift away! That's not fair!" Tatsuki shouted up at him, waving her arms frantically and angrily before settling down and getting into the ram pose to channel her chakra, "Naruto-sensei you'd better hope I don't get this on the first try because I'm not going for the knives, I'm going to punch you dead in the face."

"Yeah right!" Naruto yelled down challengingly, "Do you know that it took me a week to learn how to do this? There's no way in hell you're getting this on the first try, I only know one person that ever did that!" And then he froze in fear as he began to add some things up.

Sakura wound up making it that high on her first try.

Sakura was a girl.

Tatsuki was a girl.

Sakura had a temper.

Tatsuki _has_ a temper and a legitimate standing gripe with him.

Tatsuki hit hard just like Sakura used to.

Tatsuki had a damn good chance of making it that high on her first try and hitting him absurdly hard just like Sakura used to because she was pissed off.

Now Naruto wasn't the type of person to wish complete and utter failure onto others, especially his own student, but just this once he needed Tatsuki's growth rate to slow down for a bit. He didn't feel like getting punched off of a wall sitting fifty feet in the air. Not today after fighting tooth and nail with Hiyori for half an hour.

Tatsuki's eyes were firmly focused on him as she stopped gathering chakra and sprinted right at the wall amid Orihime cheering her on while Naruto bit his nails nervously, 'Fuck up, fuck up, fuck up, fuck up!' Naruto thought frantically.

Unfortunately for Tatsuki she had way more chakra than Sakura had as a genin. She had more chakra than Sakura ever had, which was what had gotten Naruto's attention in the first place. That made her chakra harder to control akin to Naruto. Thus Naruto was saved by the sheer amount of chakra that Tatsuki had because she made it halfway up before her grip on the wall faded and she fell screaming to the ground landing flat on her back, "Ow… I hate you so much sensei."

Naruto let out a breath of relief and pointed at Tatsuki, "And that is why you fail! Because you do not respect your sensei!" He then looked at Orihime, "That's why I told you to come out here with us. I wish I had someone to heal me when I fell off of the tree I was using to learn how to do this."

Tatsuki spoke in a strained voice as she continued to glare up at Naruto, "I can't wait until I get good enough to punch you right in the face for everything you do to me..."

Orihime began healing Tatsuki up, "Why does all of your training end up with someone getting hurt Naruto?" She asked the blonde curiously.

"I don't know Orihime." Naruto replied, getting down off of the wall as she finished healing Tatsuki, "Maybe it's because pain makes you get things faster. Maybe living for 2000 years made me kind of sadistic. Maybe it's just because I'm too lazy to think of something safer to do to train her." Tatsuki got up and quickly tried again, making it just as high up before falling back to the ground again, "I see your point though… okay time to train you too!"

Orihime blinked in surprise, "What?"

Naruto put his hands on the normally ditzy girl's shoulders while Tatsuki got back up and prepared to run up the wall again, "You use your powers to catch her before she hits the ground. It's got to be safer than letting her slam dunk herself in the dirt right?"

Taking a moment to actually think about it, Orihime suddenly looked up as it became clear that Tatsuki had slipped and was falling again. Orihime was able to snap into action in a hurry though, "Santen Kesshun (Three Sacred Links Shield) I reject!" Orihime's spirits formed a clear yellow shield that caught Tatsuki in the air before dispersing, allowing her to land on her feet.

Orihime breathed a sigh of relief before she noticed that Naruto still had a hand on her shoulder, "Just like that. Try to catch her out of the air, but give her a chance to roll through in the air and get herself upright before you do so she can practice landing on her feet. If you want to test yourself try to catch her closer and closer to the ground. It'll work on the speed you can summon your shield with and your timing."

She had been wondering just how Naruto was going to train her ever since Yoruichi told her that if she wanted his help he would be more than happy to. Such a simple exercise and yet it served a great purpose. Orihime was ecstatic that she could help Tatsuki and train herself at the same time. And this was why she had found it so easy to trust in Naruto unlike some of the others at first. He was just a good person and apparently something of a problem solver too.

"Thank you for including me Naruto!" Orihime said aloud, waving to the immortal shinobi as he walked away, turning around to give her one grin before heading back around the front of the building.

"Orihime!" Tatsuki cried out fearfully as she found herself falling back to the ground again.

"Oh sorry Tatsuki!" Orihime shouted before quickly catching her friend out of the air, "Santen Kesshun (Three Sacred Links Shield) I reject!"

XxX

(Urahara Shop)

Hidan was at least happy to find that Yoruichi had been spending all day there, as at least it meant that he had company. Jinta and Ururu as well as Tessai in the mean time were at the manic mercies of Dondochakka and Pesche as the two now had someone else to pester. As they sat around the table, Hidan couldn't help but smile serenely as Jinta had smashed a baseball bat off of Pesche's skinny frame out of annoyance, "You know that kid reminds me a lot of myself; full of anger. I wonder how he would receive Jashin-sama's message of death?"

"Don't even try it Hidan." Yoruichi warned the insane monk of violence as she took a sip of her milk, "Besides, this Jashin of yours isn't a god, he's a Hollow, I'm telling you."

Hidan scoffed, "Who cares? The powers I had when I was alive came from somewhere in that ritual. I saw him myself. If he's truly a Hollow then I am closer to my lord now than I ever was before. Another reason to be grateful to Uzumaki. Maybe I can lobby for Jashin-sama to spare him… or at least kill him quickly."

A dry look came from the former 2nd Division Captain, "Wow… you're such a gracious, giving man Hidan."

"I do what I can for those that need it." Hidan said in reply, ignoring her sarcastic tone. His mood then soured, "I can't believe I had to bring the green-haired brat of an Arrancar here for a glorified check-up with stupid-Urahara. What the fuck do I look like?"

"He's the only one that's qualified to do it… as few qualifications as he really has to do so." Yoruichi said, rather flippant on their resident expert of Arrancar, which wasn't saying very much as the rest of them didn't have much of a clue about the race, even the ones of them that actually were Arrancar.

Hidan drummed his fingers on the table irritably, "I know that but why did _I _have to be the one to bring her here? I wanted to eat." His stomach then growled, "I'm hungrier than hell, that food on the plane ride back completely sucked. Hey can I turn into an Arrancar and eat one of those kids Urahara keeps around here?" He saw Yoruichi give him a disbelieving look, "What? He has two. He doesn't need both of them."

At that moment, Urahara came from the back where his lab was situated, scratching under his bucket hat with a rather bewildered look on his face, "Hey everyone, I'm done checking on your little Arrancar tagalong… and I think I've found something."

Yoruichi raised an eyebrow at how reserved the usually eccentric scientist appeared to be, "Is it a good something or a bad something." It had to be a bad something from the way he was acting. Things were going their way far too much for it not to be something bad.

Urahara motioned for them to follow him, which they did as he began to speak again, "Well… I don't know where to start or where to begin so I guess I'll just start with the most blatant thing I found. Yeah, I found a giant tattoo of a number 3 on her back." He turned around and saw the wide eyes of Yoruichi and Hidan, "Go ahead and ask the question that better be on your minds right now."

"What in the world/hell is a little girl doing with a tattoo?" Yoruichi and Hidan asked respectively before looking and smirking at each other for saying pretty much the exact same thing, "Nice."

With the minor bonding moment between Yoruichi and Hidan at a close, Urahara launched back into his explanation of what he had found with Nel, "Yeah that's what I said when I saw it. The sweet little thing had no idea what I was talking about so I just started to move along towards measuring her Reiatsu, trying to figure out just when an Arrancar grew to be powerful since I had never even heard of a child Arrancar before. Hell I've never really even heard of child Hollows period."

Hidan at this point was all ears since there was finally something interesting about the little pain-in-his-ass Arrancar Nel Tu to pay attention to, "So what did you find? If you're bringing it up then you didn't think it was a fucking waste of our time to do it."

"This is the really interesting part." Urahara said as they eventually made it to the door of his lab, "You know the crack in her mask that she has on her head? I thought that was supposed to be there, that it had been like that the entire time. Yeah, it's not."

Yoruichi found herself getting angry as the crack corresponded with a scar that was as clear as day on Nel's face, "So the crack in the mask and the scar on her face weren't just how she looked? Someone did that to her?"

The grave nod from Urahara showed her that he felt the exact same way about the idea, "Yes, both of those things are long standing wounds dealt to her at some point years ago, from something that she can't even remember. But that's not all; from the test on her Reiatsu that I did it looks like there's a leak of spiritual energy originating from the crack in her mask."

"How much?" Hidan asked.

Urahara then started laughing nervously, "I don't know to be quite honest with you." He then turned gravely serious again, "I don't know because it was more than my machines could measure. You can't even sense it normally, it's like a silent leak in a canister of odorless gas. She's asleep right now, all of the tests I did were pretty tiring."

Yoruichi didn't seem to like the sound of the way things were going as she took on a thinking stance, "So what do we do now?"

Hidan scoffed and turned, walking towards the end of the hall before turning the corner where the sounds of a small scuffle occurred prior to Dondochakka and Pesche being kicked out into the open by the silver-haired Arrancar, "There. Ask them. They should know something right? I could interrogate them if you want me to." He finished with a dark grin on his face as he extended his pike.

Dondochakka and Pesche jumped up to their feet, taking fighting stances with each other back to back, prepared to take on Urahara, Yoruichi, and Hidan. Pesche spoke with the utmost seriousness in warning, "What do you guys plan on doing with Nel?"

Dondochakka followed up, all pretenses of them being goofy and useless disappeared right then and there, "We aren't just going to let you exterminate Nel because she's an Arrancar that you think is a threat don'tcha know?"

Hidan merely left his pike extended with not a trace of emotion on his face before he stabbed himself in the chest, releasing himself from his Gigai and forcing the two strange looking Arrancar in between him and his Shinigami allies to begin quivering at his Reiatsu before they steadied themselves, still determined to fight, "Do you really think that you can beat all three of us? You can feel the difference in our strength and I know that you've been listening well enough to know who these two are and how strong they are."

"Hidan calm down." Yoruichi said in an effort to diffuse the situation between everyone, "You guys can calm down. We don't want to hurt Nel, we just want to know why all of these strange things are happening with her. You can't ask us to put you up if you're hiding some dangerous secret can you? There was a reason that you didn't want Naruto to send you back to Hueco Mundo and we want to hear it. We _need_ to hear it."

Pesche and Dondochakka looked at Yoruichi and then at Hidan as his Reiatsu dropped. He had gotten back inside of his Gigai as a form of a truce. With the tension dropped considerably, Pesche decided that at the very least they could explain their situation, "You must understand that we no longer have any allegiance to Aizen, just to Nelliel-sama."

Urahara narrowed his eyes under the shadow of the brim of his hat, "So when you say that you no longer have any allegiance to Aizen that means that you did at one point, correct?"

"Yes." Pesche admitted, there was no need to try and beat around the bush over the matter, "Nelliel-sama was a member of Aizen's Espada army until several years ago. She was betrayed and attacked by two that were supposed to be our comrades, one who had been an Espada already and another who later managed to become one it seems, Nnoitra Gilga and Szayel Aporro Granz. We owe Naruto a debt of gratitude for disposing of Szayel if nothing else once he saw Nel and decided to finish what he had started."

Dondochakka decided to speak next, "We decided that if this was the way that things were run in Aizen's army, where others could attack comrades just because and suffer no consequences because of it, well we didn't want to be a part of something like that. But by then Nel was already hurt don'tcha know? She couldn't remember anything, so we just decided to live as Nel's brothers, to keep her happy and to make sure that nothing else ever happened to her like that again. It's our job as her Fracción."

Pesche nodded in agreement with his partner's words, "We aren't your enemy. We just want to protect Nelliel-sama."

They all stood in silence, taking all of this in until Hidan spoke up, "So with the three on her back, that means that she was ranked third. Is that third from the top or third from the bottom? I'm just curious. How are we supposed to know this stuff if nobody ever tells us?"

Pesche found no harm in answering the question presented, "Well she was the original Tres Espada… so that means that she was officially recognized as the third strongest Arrancar in Aizen's army. Szayel said that he was the Octava Espada so he was second from the very bottom."

Yoruichi's eyes widened. Third from the top had to be something incredible since there was still that Harribel woman to deal with and they didn't even know which number she was supposed to be.

Hidan palmed his face, "Great, so the bigwig that Uzumaki knocked off was apparently a total nobody on the real totem pole. Now what the hell do we do?"

Urahara scratched his chin in thought, "Maybe I have some way to help out Nel in there… but I'm not sure. Would she attack me for no good reason if I were to fix her?" Pesche and Dondochakka just shrugged as they didn't know. Urahara simply grinned good-naturedly, "Oh well I don't really care too much one way or the other. I'm getting paid for it and what's science without running a few risks?"

"She really shouldn't just attack you." Pesche tried to explain, "Even if fixing her damage brings her memory of her time with Aizen back and her station as an Espada Nelliel-sama was never really one to start a conflict without a good reason. If you don't do anything to her then she wouldn't try to hurt you. I think she won't."

"Meh I don't care." Urahara chirped as he opened his door back to his lab, offering the other two the chance to come inside the room, "You can come and get her and take her back to Naruto's place. We can continue this on another day." Pesche and Dondochakka then went inside to get their chibified former Espada.

Yoruichi let out a sigh as she and Hidan were left in the hallway by themselves with the exception of Ururu and Jinta spying on them at the end of the hallway, "Yeah we really need to set up that trip back to the Seireitei… soon."

Hidan shrugged as he leaned against the wall in the hallway, "Well I don't care one way or the other because I'm not going. You and Uzumaki-brat can have fun with talking to the people that would kill me if they all knew that I existed in the world of the living. I'll just stay here and run this place while you're both gone."

Yoruichi looked at Hidan with a raised eyebrow on her dark-skinned features, "You think you're going to be in charge? No way, Gaara's in charge while we're gone. He's got way more leadership qualities than you."

"What?" Hidan shouted, pushing himself off of the wall to protest, "I've got seniority in this bitch! What's the Sand-rat got that I don't?" He didn't wait for an answer and began stomping down the hall, scaring the two kids into running out of his way, "I can't believe this crap! I'm literally the first recruit in this ass-backwards setup, I should be getting all the accolades and Sand-rat skipped right over me in the pecking order?" He said, his voice echoing as he made it to the front of the shop, "Give me one good reason that he should run the place?"

"Gaara ran an entire village." Yoruichi said simply, "You killed most of yours."

Hidan's ranting stopped before the door opened to the entrance of the shop, "Yeah? Well give me another reason! That's right, you can't give me another reason!" With that, Hidan slammed the sliding door and left, ranting into the night.

Jinta and Ururu walked over to Yoruichi who had a tick mark on her head at the way Hidan had just belligerently shouted his way out of the house, "Um Miss Yoruichi…" Ururu asked meekly, "Are you upset?"

"Of course she's upset you idiot!" Jinta snapped at Ururu before pointing over at Yoruichi, "Didn't you see how Crazy Silver Bum was acting? I'd be totally pissed if I was her!"

"I'm not mad." Yoruichi said tensely, the tick mark on the side of her head arguing to the contrary, "I'm just remembering all of the _joys_ of leadership. And people wonder why I never really missed being a captain."

* * *

**Bang! Yeah, I've got nothing hilarious or interesting to say since the last time I updated something was like twelve hours ago. So whatever, I hope you enjoyed.**

**Kenchi out people.**


	18. Black Budget Project

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. If you don't understand how I don't, neither do I… It's just the way that the world is sometimes. But it's okay, because today's going to be my day!

…and if not there's always tomorrow!

…or the day after that!

…and next year is always a viable option for upwards movement!

…Yeah!

**Chapter 16: Black Budget Project**

* * *

In the training room basement beneath Naruto's base, Naruto and Gaara both sat side by side calmly as they stared out at the scene in front of them, one of the two in a meditative seated position to feel the area around him more clearly, "So you did this? That's really good work Gaara." Naruto commented in an impressed manner, "It looks nice. Maybe we could throw in some grass and trees around here too once I find some."

"I was tired of the arid appearance of this training ground." Gaara replied matter-of-factly, which sounded rather weird given who he was and where he came from, "And it wasn't that hard either. All I had to do was make a massive hole and then fill it with water." He shrugged his shoulders, "By the way, your water bill is going to be murderous at the end of the month."

Naruto let out a noise of indifference, "And that is why I keep so much money all the time; so that I can do stuff like this and get away with it whenever I want." He said, gesturing to the lake directly in front of them. A nod came from his sand manipulating ally in agreement.

Gaara could have just told Naruto what he was doing and he probably could have let him fill it himself, but even though he'd never say it out loud Gaara probably had fun finding whatever way he could to waste Naruto's cash on something trivial. Well it wasn't really trivial. Aside from being aesthetically pleasing, it also served an actual purpose as Tatsuki ran for dear life on the surface of the lake, trench knives in hand.

"She's really getting this down very quickly." Gaara said, impressed with Tatsuki's progress. When he thought about it though, it kind of made sense. A genin was kept busy with teamwork drills, basic training, and missions so that they only really got hands-on upper level training when they showed potential of achieving such. Seeing as how all Tatsuki had to do was school and training she didn't have any of the other things getting in her way.

By the middle part of her second day after being introduced to it, she got wall-walking down enough to get her knives out of the wall. By then Gaara had gotten bored with the scenery in the basement and had made this lake, thus Naruto moved right to the second operational purpose of using her chakra; teaching her to water-walk.

Naruto wanted to ask Gaara how the hell he managed to fill it so quickly, but then realized he was probably better off not knowing.

He also figured that he needed to check the plumbing all over the office later.

Or call Urahara and ask him since he probably had something to do with it anyway.

"Tatsuki-chan!" Naruto yelled out to the girl running away on the surface of the water, "Stop running and fight him!"

Tatsuki turned towards her blonde teacher and glared at him, "You fight him!" She shouted back before getting her trench knives up to block a strike from a triple-bladed scythe that knocked her sliding on her heels back across the surface of the water. She looked at the smirking Hidan who was standing on the lake as well, twirling his scythe showingly, "Grr… I'm going to lop your head off!" She shouted as she ran towards him intent on attacking.

"That's the spirit!" Hidan taunted, lifting his scythe to block the teenage girl's angry strikes, "Fight me like you want to end me! Get used to aiming to maim, scar, and kill! Come on! No matter what you do, I can take it!" He yelled maniacally as the sparks flew from Tatsuki's trench knives clashing with the pole and blades of his scythe. She was way stronger when she was angry, 'And Uzumaki said that there weren't any humans around that could use chakra like the old days anymore. My ass there aren't. This girl's something else altogether!'

He didn't know what it was, but the way she adjusted to the way of fighting that she needed to learn very quickly impressed Naruto, Gaara, and Hidan as well. Naruto admitted that it was like watching Ichigo fight Zangetsu to get his Bankai only more drawn out. Though he never said this to her directly, nor did anyone else, it was weird to watch her get stronger by leaps and bounds over the course of a few weeks, none of them knew what it was that was pushing her forward. No one was supposed to get better like this.

It was clear that the girl was no stranger to a fight at least. That was good, because they didn't need to teach her the basics of how to face down an enemy, she didn't need to learn the nuances of how battles usually escalated or little ins and outs that only a person that had been in combat could pick up on. She needed to learn how to bring that over from a sparring mindset to an environment where she and her opponents were truly out for blood, but that was something that could easily be achieved by fighting the only one of them that definitely couldn't die no matter what; Hidan while in his Gigai form.

It also served the purpose of giving her human-like targets much like what Aizen's army would look like.

"I don't get it Gaara." Naruto said in confusion as he began paying rapt attention to what was going on in front of them, "I understand the knowing how to defend herself, the taking all of this chakra, and Shinigami, and Hollow stuff in stride. Why is she getting this good so fast?" His voice really reflected his thoughts on the matter, "Yoruichi says it's like Ichigo and his Shinigami powers, or Chad and Orihime with theirs but it shouldn't be, right? I mean, you shouldn't just get a massive jump in skill so fast no matter what should you?"

Gaara let out a grunt, signifying that he was thinking, "I understand your initial concern. But remember, this has been explained to us already. Tatsuki's repeated interaction with Kurosaki Ichigo and his massive amount of uncontrollable Reiryoku-."

"-Wound up warping the environment around him, and her along with it." Naruto interjected abruptly, cutting off Gaara's more or less textbook explanation for what was happening, getting Gaara to turn his rather emotionless stare on Naruto who didn't look back over at him lest he find himself unnerved by the former Kazekage, "Yeah, I know that. I sat through the same speech from Urahara you did. But even so, it still shouldn't be this easy."

"Well think of it this way." Gaara tried to reason, "She already knew how to fight, and fight at a high level from what we've heard and seen firsthand, that means that her physical energy was at peak form and she knew what to do with it. All you did once Kurosaki got her spiritual energy to match it was teach her how to access the combination of both, i.e. chakra."

Naruto still didn't bother looking at Gaara, still choosing to look out at the lake instead, "Yeah? Well I'm not even talking about that. I'm talking about _that_." He said, pointing his finger out at Tatsuki who dodged a swipe of Hidan's scythe with a nasty little combination of Bunshin and Kawarimi no Jutsu to attack him from behind, "She shouldn't be fast enough where a substitution like that was enough to let her get the drop on Hidan."

Gaara still didn't see the big deal, as far as he was concerned it was just a fantastic use of misdirection, the point of the jutsu in the first place. He spoke up as he watched Hidan block and then kick her away stiffly, forcing her to skip across the water like a stone before sinking under, "It doesn't look like she got the drop on anything to me. Do you even know how fast she really was in the first place? And even if she wasn't that fast, remember that you would have been judging that off of _your_ standards."

Naruto conceded the point and nodded stiffly, "That was really good though. I liked it." He said in reference to Tatsuki's performance as he stood up and walked out onto the lake to relieve her, "Okay, thanks for going easy today Hidan." He said to the silver-haired man.

Hidan just looked at him owlishly before grinning sheepishly, "Well damn Uzumaki, I forgot all about that like ten minutes into the fight." He then saw Naruto's eyes widen, "Heh, yeah. Some of those times I was really swinging to disembowel. My bad." She was just lucky he stayed in his Gigai if that was the case.

Naruto just pointed to the shore where Gaara was, basically telling him to get off of the lake "You're not fighting Tatsuki anymore. Not for a _long_ time." However that just made what she had done all the more impressive. That entire sequence of combat had lasted around 45 minutes.

Scoffing to himself as if it wasn't a big loss at all, Hidan flippantly went to shore, "Fine, you're acting like I can't just rip a hole straight to Hueco Mundo when I want to kill something." As he reached land and started walking towards the stairs to head upstairs he chimed in with something else, "By the way, you're a crappy teacher anyway, she only cut me one time."

Naruto rolled his eyes and turned his attention to Tatsuki pulling herself out of the water and lying down on her back at the side of the lake. She turned her head towards him and coughed out some water, "Hidan's an asshole."

"Yeah." Naruto said in agreement as he took a seat on the ground next to her, "But tell me that fighting him isn't helping though." Tatsuki sat up and shook her head, telling him that she could see how it was helping her, "You're really getting things down fast. It took me four months to get through surface-walking and water-walking after I became a ninja." He didn't tell her the other extenuating circumstances for that because after being kicked around for most of an hour she didn't need to know that her free time was a big reason that she was moving along so quickly.

The focus and dedication was very much appreciated though. She was definitely taking the whole thing seriously, even before he sicced Hidan on her and basically made her survive.

"I practice at home too." Tatsuki admitted, frowning at the fact that she was utterly drenched from falling into the lake during the fight with Hidan time and time again. It was understandable that she could do that too. All she had learned were the basics, none of which were destructive, loud, attention-attracting, or anything like that. There was no reason at all that she couldn't take her training into her own hands away from the office, "Is that bad?" She asked after not getting a response from Naruto at first.

Without looking at her he shook his head, "When I was a kid there wasn't anything wrong with being able to do things like we can do. That was a _long_ time ago though, and now who knows what people would do if they knew? You can practice on your own, I'm happy that you do, just make sure that nobody knows you can do this stuff… especially when you start learning the more destructive stuff."

At the mere mention of 'destructive stuff', Tatsuki's eyes let off a nearly unnoticeable shine as she looked over into her teacher's face, "Now by 'destructive stuff' you mean some of the things that I've seen you do when you and Gaara fight? Or some of the stuff I see you do when you and Yoruichi fight?"

Naruto looked at her and raised an eyebrow before turning his head to look back out at the lake, "Oh hell no. Most of the stuff I can do takes tons of power that I don't think you have… and I don't really think I've even busted out the big guns in front of you yet. I don't want to destroy parts of Karakura Town… or get you killed trying to use any of my moves." He noticed Tatsuki frown and start to grumble and spoke again, "I didn't say I wasn't going to teach you anything though. Since I can't teach you my first real ninjutsu without probably killing you out of negligence or the next thing on the list in my repertoire without trusting you more I'll skip to the next thing."

"Next thing?" Tatsuki said questioningly, "What next thing is that?"

In response, Naruto held up his right hand, forming a spinning blue orb of chakra in it. Tatsuki thought that it was very pretty, but other than being a way of showing off visible chakra, she didn't see what the big deal about it was. Naruto picked up on this, "You've never seen me use this have you?" Tatsuki shook her head saying that she indeed had not, "Well just so you know, we're skipping straight from the D-rank techniques to the A-rank."

Tatsuki still looked at the orb of chakra skeptically, "What's so A-rank about this?" Her answer came when Naruto slammed the orb down on the ground between them, throwing up debris and cratering the ground where it hit. And this made Tatsuki desperately want to learn this ninjutsu, "And this is called?" She asked, a more enthusiastic tone in her voice.

"Rasengan (Spiraling Sphere)." Naruto informed her, pleased that she was impressed with the jutsu, "It's not only as strong as you can see right here, but for those of us with what I like to call 'stupid hands' you don't need to know any hand-seals to use it. This was kind of a boon for me when I was younger because I was terrible at using hand-seals. I still kind of suck at it and most of my jutsu don't really use many of them if any at all."

And Tatsuki honestly hated hand-seals, she liked keeping her hands in fists so that she could fight. Letting her guard down to make a Bunshin or even to prepare a Kawarimi went against everything she knew about keeping up a guard. Having a jutsu ready that she only needed to charge the chakra for was exactly what she wanted, and having one that actually did something offensive was even more appealing.

Excitedly jumping to her feet with a grin on her face, Tatsuki looked ready for more work, impressive again due to having had fought Hidan for most of the hour prior, "Alright then, sounds good to me! So what's first?"

"First…" Naruto commented, still not looking at her, which confused her since he had only looked at her once and had made a concerted effort to keep from doing so again ever since then, "You're going to go get dry and change clothes because I can see through them." Tatsuki blushed and looked at herself, noticing this fact, "Gaara's been staring at you for the last few minutes."

Tatsuki turned to look across the lake after Naruto's accusation of Gaara only to find sand blowing where he had just been sitting. Growling to herself about her drenched state, Tatsuki started walking off, stomping on the surface of the water, cursing out Hidan as she was set on heading upstairs and getting herself together again.

"That's surprising." Naruto put a smile on his face as he heard Yoruichi's voice from behind him, "I fully expected you to be gawking at Tatsuki the entire time. You would have been staring at me like you had x-ray vision if I had been the one all wet."

Naruto stood up and turned around to face the former Shinigami captain, "She's too young, you know that." He remarked, getting a roll of golden eyes from Yoruichi. Even comparing their ages was like comparing a garden pond to a landmark lake, "I feel strange enough with the relationship that you and I have. I can't just go around ogling high school girls." Especially ones that he knew… at least when they knew that he was watching them, "I'm a responsible sensei Yoruichi-chan."

"Yeah, sure whatever." Yoruichi said dryly before getting to the heart of the matter she had come to see him for, "Kisuke's got the portal set to leave for tomorrow. And as a bonus, they know we're coming this time, so no dealing with a veritable army of Shinigami again." She sounded rather cheerful at that before taking on a pointed look, "Who's in charge while we're gone?"

"Oh Gaara for sure." Naruto replied without missing a beat, taking note of the satisfied look on his second-in-command's face, "What's with that look? It's Gaara or Hidan and I don't even trust Hidan not to disembowel Tatsuki during a spar anymore, let alone keep everyone else alive until we get back. I'm not even taking the whole 'former kage' thing into account yet but that's another point even if you don't get the reference."

Yoruichi got behind Naruto and jumped on his back, "So we're good to go right?" She asked as he began walking back towards the stairs to go upstairs, "We can just head out first thing tomorrow and that'll be that?"

"Sounds good to me." Naruto said with a grin on his face. He sure as hell didn't want to go to school again either, this was a great excuse to not do so, "A business trip sounds great. I need to check on my account in the Soul Society anyway."

XxX

(The Next Day – Karakura High School)

Kon, in Ichigo's body, eyed the empty seat nearby that had been more or less designated as Uzumaki Naruto's seat. While he didn't know too much about the guy personally, as least not as much as he knew about Ichigo's other friends, he did know that the reason he was currently in Ichigo's body living his life in the original's stead was because Naruto had said or done something that had resulted in Ichigo taking on his Shinigami form for an extended period of time.

He also didn't really have the time to ask Ichigo's other friends about where he just so happened to be, or why they weren't there with him. Whenever school ended they would all usually head off almost immediately to do whatever it was that they did. It wasn't anything like going home since he knew where they lived, and the ways that they took certainly weren't to their homes. It was all very suspicious to him.

'Man no one tells me anything.' Kon thought as he looked over the entire classroom in boredom. Even Ichigo didn't divulge where he was going or what he was doing before he left Kon his body, 'He'd better at least be doing something productive…'

XxX

(Visoreds Hideout – Training Ground)

Two barriers around the outside of the warehouse, one barrier around the majority of the training ground itself beneath the warehouse. This was all required so that Ichigo's Reiatsu did not leak out and alert absolutely everyone and everything that could sense even the slightest amount of it to his presence or current existence.

There was a very good reason to hide the latter at the moment.

Staring inside of the barrier set inside of the training ground at all of the dust and debris in the air, Shinji let out a groan of exasperation, "He's going to break that Bakudou isn't he?" He asked as if he already knew the answer, looking towards Hachi who seemed to be struggling to maintain it.

"Yes, it looks like it." The gigantic man said in a reserved, polite manner, "I don't believe it will hold for too much longer."

"Fantastic…" Shinji said sarcastically before turning to the other Visoreds in the room, "Okay, who's going in first to hold that thing back?" All fingers flew towards him, getting his jaw to drop, "Hey, just why should I go first? I'm the leader here."

Lisa was the first to respond to his question, "Well if you're the leader then lead by example and show us how to handle things." She said nonchalantly

"You've all done this before! You know how to do it!" Shinji shouted in reply before calming down and turning towards the barrier, scratching his head, "Well someone needs to get in there… and I mean now."

Hiyori stood up and stomped over to the barrier in a huff, "Fine! I'll go first… there's no way that dumbass bastard could be that tough. Hachi open the barrier for me!" She snapped, getting a small opening in the barrier made for her to enter, allowing her to feel the Reiatsu leaking out that took her slightly aback before she quickly pulled herself together, "So he's got some power, no big deal." She said as she stepped inside and allowed the barrier to reclose.

The dust enshrouding the inside of the barrier cleared to reveal a white, muscular, humanoid lizard complete with black markings, a long thick tail, spikes protruding from its shoulders, and three toes. It had a skull mask on its face, long orange hair, the tattered remnants of a Shinigami hakama around its waist and legs, and most importantly, Zangetsu in its right hand.

Outside of the barrier, Love, not looking at a manga to pass time due to the seriousness of this event, looked at the scene inside of it and remarked, "Do you think we should have made Naruto come down here and do this? It's kind of his fault that we skipped to this part so soon."

"I don't think that's appropriate in this case." Rose said, focusing intently on Ichigo in his Hollow form, "We told him to bring Ichigo to us but didn't tell him much more about how exactly we were going to help him control his powers. If he sped things along with his words then that was probably because he didn't know about _this_ part of the training."

From inside the barrier the fight had started between Hiyori and Hollow-Ichigo, tearing up a lot of the landscape within right off the bat. Kensei had a frown on his face, but that was usual, "I say if anyone pays for this crap it should be Urahara. It's really his fault that this happened in the first place."

XxX

(Urahara Shop – Training Ground)

"Achoo!" Urahara wiped his nose following his sudden sneeze, "Ugh, I hope that was some beautiful lady talking about me just now." He said to himself before turning to Naruto and Yoruichi, "So it's just you two going?" He asked.

Dressed in his red sage coat and corresponding gear, Naruto nodded before shrugging, "Who else would go? Everyone else that could go is busy, and I can't take Hidan or Gaara because that would start something we probably wouldn't be able to explain or finish."

"Besides…" Yoruichi added on, "This is going to require a diplomatic touch." She jerked her thumb towards Naruto, "I shouldn't even be taking _him_ for this. Gaara's more diplomatic than he is." She ignored the deadpan look coming from her blonde companion, "…But he's the one that's supposed to be heading this whole thing up, so if he didn't go something would seem off."

"Do you know how many years I've wanted a position of leadership?" Naruto asked Yoruichi, "I've wanted to do stuff like this since I was a kid. There's no way I'm screwing this up. Everyone will know we're legit after this is over with."

Urahara smirked as he walked over to Tessai to begin the opening of the portal, "So what exactly are we called then?" He asked, "I mean, we're not the Gotei 13 so you can't just tack a number onto the end of a squad." As he made his way to the outline of the portal he noticed that Naruto hadn't answered yet, "You don't know what we're supposed to be called yet, do you?" He asked amusedly as the portal opened.

"I'll be sure to work on that." Naruto replied dryly before turning to Yoruichi, "Are we going to get chased by that Koutotsu thing that came after us the last time?"

"No. They probably turned it off since they know we're coming." Yoruichi said as she walked towards the open portal, "But even if we did get chased, you can outrun it right?" She then jumped through and began heading towards the Soul Society.

Naruto sighed and shook his head before addressing Urahara and Tessai, "What you told me about Nel… do you know what you're going to do to help her?"

"Nope!" Urahara said brightly, getting a deep frown out of Naruto, "Don't look so worried about it. She'll be fine staying here with her brothers until I come up with something. It might not be as hard as we think it will be." 'Maybe.'

Things had been going way too well for them anyway. That was the best they were going to get for the time being it appeared, so Naruto accepted that, "Alright. I'm counting on you Urahara. Earn that paycheck." He said as he jumped into the portal and left the world of the living.

"You pay everyone in cash though!" Urahara shouted after him before deactivating the portal. Once the Senkaimon faded, he looked at Tessai, "Well, let's get back to work shall we? Figuring out how to stop that leak of spiritual energy from little Nel's mask."

"I have an idea if I could suggest it." Tessai stated as they started to leave the room, "Though I am not sure of just what extent such a course of action would manage to fix or if the person we need for my idea is skilled enough for it." The look on Urahara's face under his bucket hat showed that he was paying attention.

XxX

(Soul Society – West Rukongai 1st District)

"Took you long enough." Yoruichi chimed from her seat on a rooftop as Naruto walked down through the streets, probably searching for her, "Did you get tripped up in the tunnel sweetie?" She asked in a teasing manner.

Naruto gave a sarcastic laugh up at the dark-skinned female Shinigami, "I didn't know we were running. And I thought that we were supposed to be diplomatic about this whole thing. Doesn't that mean we're supposed to be serious?"

Yoruichi nodded and pointed off in the direction of the Seireitei, "Yeah, but we're not there yet. I don't have to act all uptight until I walk through those gates. Then I can let out the Shihouin Yoruichi that was the 22nd head of my clan, captain of the 2nd Division, and the leader of the Onmitsukidou and you can let out… whatever serious part of Uzumaki Naruto exists." She jumped down from where she had been sitting on the roof and landed in front of Naruto, "So what's the plan boss man? How are you going to get us sanctioned by the Gotei 13?"

"I couldn't give a fuck less if we were sanctioned by the Gotei 13 Yoruichi-chan… And to hell with that '10 year trial period' the old man was talking about back when the idea was first planted in my head." Naruto said, getting a confused look out of Yoruichi, "We're not meant to be an actual working part of the Seireitei. We're meant to operate outside of it, to handle the things that we think should be taken care of. If we wind up being one of them then what exactly makes us different from any other little division of the Gotei 13 or any other part of the Seireitei?"

She started to get it. Yoruichi understood what Naruto was doing here if he wasn't lobbying for a position as a sanctioned faction of the Seireitei, "You just want to let them know that the way you're doing this is working. Without you going through their usual channels of protocol we can get things moving way faster than they can."

"That's it." Naruto confirmed for her, "We're just here to tell them what we've found out that Jooubachi didn't tell them because she left, let the old man Yamamoto know that we're willing to help, and we'll even do this Aizen stuff for free because it needs to be done, but we need to get paid if they want our help later. That's how things are going to go. If people want our help and know how to find us… and can pay us, then we'll go ahead and work for them."

"Guns for hire…" Yoruichi said, liking the sound of working at her own pace and schedule, "So that's your vision of what you want for us?"

"My vision?" Naruto remarked derisively, "What do you know about my vision? My vision would turn your world upside down, tear asunder your illusions and send the sanctuary of your own true ignorance crashing down around you. Now ask yourself: are you really ready to see that vision?" He asked, bringing them to a halt to stare intently at her.

Yoruichi just looked at him owlishly and shrugged her shoulders, "I don't know. Probably."

The serious stare from Naruto dropped and he grinned at her sheepishly as they started walking again, "Heh, I was just joking anyway… kind of. What's up Jidanbou?" He greeted the massive gate guardian that had lifted the door for them to enter the Seireitei. Jidanbou could only wave one had as the other held up the gate on his shoulders as he had heard what Naruto had said and didn't exactly know how to receive that last comment.

"Um…" Jidanbou started to say once he allowed the gates of the Seireitei to lower again, "I was told to inform you both upon your arrival that you are to head towards the 1st Division Barracks at the earliest possible time to speak with Yamamoto-sotaichou."

"Well isn't that convenient?" Yoruichi said cheerfully, rapping Naruto on the shoulder, "And to think, we were headed that way right now. That's a long way to go though." She then got a sly smile on her face before asking him a question, "So Naruto, do you want to play a game?"

There went that damn smile that Naruto damn well despised. It either meant something cool was about to happen, or something was about to piss him off, and since it was still daylight out it wasn't going to be the cool thing, "What game?" Naruto asked her despite himself. And his answer came when Yoruichi suddenly blurred out of his sight and he felt a presence on his back.

"Just a little game of tag." Yoruichi said in his ear quietly. When he reached to grab a hold of her he let off a scoff due to it being an afterimage.

Growling to himself as he could just hear her laughing on the wind, Naruto turned to Jidanbou who gave him a silent thumbs up.

Well, at least trying to catch Yoruichi would make an otherwise cumbersome trip all the way across the Seireitei much more lively, he might as well enjoy it either way. Naruto jumped up on one of the high walls lining the streets of the Seireitei and cupped his hands around his mouth, "You'd better be headed straight to the 1st Division Yoruichi-chan because your ass is mine, dattebayo!" He shouted.

"Ha! 'Dattebayo'! I still love that!" He heard Yoruichi shout with some humor in her voice, getting Naruto's eye to twitch before he took off in a blur in search of her.

XxX

(Karakura Town)

"So…" Tatsuki said, trench knives in hand as she stood in her fighting stance in a park, "You guys are sure I have to do this?" She asked rather tentatively as she gripped her weapons tightly. Standing a distance away from her was a grey scorpion-like Hollow with a sabertooth mask skittering around an empty playground. Her last run-in with a Hollow wasn't exactly pleasant, one didn't necessarily enjoy getting their body taken over by a giant octopus monster.

Nearby, Chad nodded to her question, "You have to know that you're able to fight a Hollow and win Tatsuki, at least fight well enough to defend yourself. Nothing bad will happen as long as we're here. We were asked to come with you for that reason." If things got bad they were more than capable of stepping in to ensure Tatsuki's safety.

Orihime was much more enthusiastic with her reinforcement, "You can do it Tatsuki-chan! Show that Hollow what you've got! Give it that new move that you said Naruto taught you!"

"I didn't even learn it yet!" Tatsuki snapped before turning her attention to the Hollow that had stopped puttering about and had now locked eyes with her, freezing both of them in place, "…Any advice anyone?" Tatsuki asked quietly, waiting out the Hollow's first move.

Uryuu was the only one to chime in with anything on that front, "Aim for the mask if you want to get rid of it quickly. It'll regenerate attacks that aren't particularly fatal." He wished he could do something to fight if push came to shove, but he still didn't have his powers back, hence he was only an informed spectator in this instance, "…And don't wait for it to attack first."

"Why?" Tatsuki asked, turning to look at Uryuu and wonder why he was giving her that kind of advice. Wasn't it better to react to an enemy than to rush in blindly with no information on how your adversary worked?

Uryuu just pointed at the scorpion-looking Hollow as he replied, "That's why."

Tatsuki turned her attention back to the Hollow and found that it had spat a rather lengthy spine at Tatsuki, forcing her to jump out of the way as it impaled a tree. She then watched the tree wither and die within seconds of being stabbed through by the Hollow's attack, "What the hell?" Tatsuki shouted loudly, "Scorpions don't do that!"

"It's a scorpion-Hollow." Uryuu supplied helpfully, tilting his glasses up onto his face and getting nods of agreement from Chad and Orihime.

"You're not helping, jerk!" Tatsuki shouted before turning her attention back to the Hollow as it roared loudly, 'Okay… just pretend that this is dodging practice all over again, only if I screw up I die.' It sounded simple, except for the dying part. That part sounded painful.

The Hollow let out another roar as it basically charged Tatsuki, snapping its front claws as it advanced. As it got close, Tatsuki dodged a snap of each claw before dodging its back stinger as it missed her and stabbed into the ground, killing the grass within a five foot radius with the poison it had injected it with.

Tatsuki backed off and made three hand-seals before a quartet of Tatsukis appeared around the Hollow and began circling it rapidly in an attempt to disorient it. As it spun around trying to guess which Tatsuki was real, it started taking slashes and punch-mark puncture wounds in its blind spots. Eventually it got sick of getting hit and regenerating its wounds and used its tail to bat all of Tatsuki's clones out of existence.

After getting rid of the clones, the Hollow looked around for the now absent Tatsuki as it hadn't hit anything solid when it rid itself of the multitude of Bunshin.

"HAAAA!"

Tatsuki then dropped a crushing falling heel kick across the back of the Hollow, getting a hiss of pain from the massive monster as its legs nearly crumbled from the pressure of the attack. Almost, because it was still tough enough to stay upright, "Oh come on. That should have broken you in half…" She mumbled to herself before she saw the tail swing about overhead, "Crap…"

The tail stabbed downward while Tatsuki was still in the middle of kneeling from her heel drop. Tatsuki lifted and crossed her trench knives in an effort to block, keeping the tail from stabbing into her. However the force behind the stab knocked her off of the Hollow's back to the ground.

Tatsuki groaned at being knocked down and disoriented before getting her bearings back in time to roll out of the way of another stab from the Hollow. After dodging a series of rapid-fire stabs, Tatsuki got back to her feet and directly punched at the tail when it came her way again, knocking it back with surprising strength.

She hit the tail so hard that the Hollow wasn't prepared for it and wound up being knocked back on its back legs, leaving its underbelly exposed. Tatsuki smirked at the opening left for her and rushed towards the Hollow before giving off a loud yell of exertion and delivering a hard flying kick right to the underbelly of the scorpion-Hollow, knocking it onto its back.

"Finish it off already." Uryuu said in a bored voice.

"I'm getting to it!" Tatsuki snapped back as she ran at the Hollow that had managed to get itself upright, just in time for her to punch it directly in the mask where she began unleashing a combination of punches with her trench knives that made the Hollow backpedal due to the impact, but did nothing otherwise, 'I can't break the mask with just my punches!'

Orihime saw the Hollow stumble and scuttle back to get some distance before opening its mouth once more, "Tatsuki-chan look out!" She shouted in warning, preparing to intervene with her Shun-Shun Rika if the need arose.

The Hollow fired a large spire into the air that exploded and started dropping spines all over the ground in something of a scatter shot. Tatsuki dodged and made liberal use of Kawarimi with spines that had already stabbed themselves into the ground as she drew closer to the Hollow that seemed frozen in place.

She clinched her fists and looked down at her weapons, 'I don't have an attack jutsu, but I do have these. I think Naruto-sensei said that channeling chakra to these things did something… I don't remember, he said it in passing, that we'd get to it later.' Well she didn't have anything to lose at this point other than her life, and if she didn't come up with a way to end the fight she might just lose that anyway.

Tatsuki guided chakra to her fists and by proxy her trench knives and ran forward at the prone Hollow. Apparently that last fire and forget attack came with some kind of recoil with it because it still hadn't moved yet.

She cocked one hand back and unleashed a punch as hard as she could, right at the mask of the Hollow as if it were a board she needed to break. Her bladed fist impacted right off of the mask, cracking it harshly with a blue ripple rolling through the cracks, momentary remnants of her chakra as blood flew from it.

Surprised by the amount of damage that one punch dealt, Tatsuki stood in awe, fist still outstretched.

"Tatsuki!" Chad yelled across the park to her, "It's not finished yet! Don't stop!"

That snapped her focus back and she drew her other fist back, generating chakra through it before unleashing her second punch that destroyed the mask and by proxy the Hollow along with it. As the Hollow dispersed into spiritual particles, Tatsuki just blinked repeatedly as her adrenaline died down. She looked down at her fists before a grin stretched out over her face, "Hell yeah! I did it! Stupid Hollows better think twice before they mess with Arisawa Tatsuki!" She then collapsed and sat down on the ground, breathing heavily.

Orihime ran over and gave her best friend a huge hug, "That was so great Tatsuki! Your first fight with a Hollow and you didn't even get hurt!" She was ecstatic that Tatsuki didn't require any healing. She looked at Chad and Uryuu, "Wasn't that great?"

Chad had a small smile on his face, "At least you didn't pass out afterwards like I did." He commented.

"You could have finished a bit faster, you looked lost for a lot of that fight." Uryuu critiqued, getting the middle finger from Tatsuki in return, "It's just an opinion…" He grumbled under his breath quietly, "When you were hitting the Hollow solidly in the mask the first time, why didn't that finish it? The second time you attacked like that it did."

Taking a moment from her little victory lap, Tatsuki looked at her trench knives to explain, "Well the first time I didn't generate any chakra through the knives. Without chakra I couldn't punch through the mask… but I thought Naruto-sensei said that using chakra would make me cut through anything I hit like that other guy he talked about that had these before me. All I did was just hit harder." She said as if she were actually disappointed that her punches were now stronger. Oh well, it was another question to ask once he came back from wherever he was. Maybe she was just doing it wrong? It didn't feel like it though.

Orihime helped Tatsuki back to her feet, "So are you ready for another one?" She asked, in high spirits now that she knew Tatsuki could beat a Hollow.

Tatsuki's face froze in a smile that actually belied her trepidation, "Another one?" She said in a rather tentative manner, "You mean there are more?"

Uryuu nodded slowly, "There are usually always more somewhere, and since Ichigo is off doing… whatever it is he's doing, someone has to deal with them." He left out the fact that he really couldn't do much without his powers. Man, it kept coming back to that. He needed something to fix that little issue and in a hurry. Having his Reiryoku sealed off after his fights in the Soul Society was really a pain. He was all but useless the way he was.

"And that someone is us?" Tatsuki asked, pointing between the three of them, "Wait, doesn't that Seireitei place send Shinigami to do this crap for us?"

Chad nodded, "Well yeah, but they usually leave the world of the living alone for the most part. Since we get a lot of trouble they sent one guy with an afro… but…"

"…But he kind of sucks." Uryuu finished for Chad, who was too nice to just flat out shoot the guy down, "He isn't going to be able to get them all if a massive outbreak occurs, not even close. And that's where we come in." Not to mention the fact that there was a standing bounty for Hollows defeated in Karakura Town for anyone in the little group of the spiritually aware. Apparently Naruto _did_ have rather deep pockets since he was footing the bill.

Tatsuki raised her hand, "Um, _I_ kind of suck, so wouldn't I be better served to go back to the base, or better yet, home?" She _could_ keep fighting these Hollows, but these Hollows weren't as strong as those Arrancar girls she got into a tiff with previously. She hadn't even cracked Naruto's directions for the Rasengan yet so there was no telling how long it would take her to learn that, and she didn't think fighting Hollows would help her get it down anyway.

Her answer came when Orihime grabbed a hold of her hand and started running off, probably towards the location of the next Hollow to face, "Come on Tatsuki-chan! Kurosaki-kun is busy so it's up to us."

"What the hell could Ichigo be doing that's so important?" Tatsuki asked belligerently as everyone started heading off to hunt for Hollows.

XxX

(Visoreds Hideout – Training Ground)

"I'm tagging out." A rather disheveled looking Rose said, his long blonde hair all out of sorts as he stepped out of the barrier enclosing Hollow-Ichigo to take a seat next to the other amassed Visoreds that had also been taking turns fighting with Ichigo. As no one immediately jumped up to take his place, he spoke up again, "Hey, I was just in there for the last two hours, someone else go in there."

Kensei stood up with a sigh and punched his right fist into his palm, "Fine… I'll smack the kid around for a bit longer." The silver-haired man said as the barrier opened for him to enter from, "How long are you going to take to beat your Inner Hollow's ass? You're taking longer than Hiyori did!" He taunted.

Hiyori took offense to being used in an insult, "Hey, less talking about me, more beating the crap out of dumbass over there!"

Ichigo let out a roar of a monstrous voice with tinges of his own original voice in it. Kensei drew his Zanpakutou and rolled his eyes, "Yeah, yeah whatever… I've got something for you ugly. Futtobase, Tachikaze (Blow it Away, Earth-Severing Wind)!"

Currents of air whirled around Kensei before it dissipated and revealed that his Zanpakutou had transformed into a combat knife with a ring on the grey hilt. He flipped the weapon in his hand and held it in a backwards grip.

Seeing his Shikai, Mashiro yelled out to him, "Hey Kensei! Are you going to use your Kamehameha Wave?" She asked rather innocently.

Kensei turned towards her with a twitching eye as he gnashed his teeth, "For the last fucking time Mashiro… That is _not_ what it's called. It doesn't even have a name. You know it doesn't have a name. It's just an attack."

"Right!" Mashiro replied cheerfully, "So I'm naming it for you, and I'm just telling you what it looks like. It's not my fault you ripped it off from Dragon Ball."

"I've been using that attack for more than 100 goddamn years! You were my lieutenant, you should know that! How can you say I ripped it off from anything, especially some dumb manga?" Kensei snapped at her irritably.

"Hey!" Love, Lisa, and Rose all said simultaneously in insulted tones of voice.

Love pointed directly at Kensei in a dramatic manner, "The life lessons taught in that manga were passed down to an entire generation of young boys that grew up to run the world of the living today."

Kensei let out an indignant snort, "Yeah… that's why the world of the living today absolutely sucks."

Lisa crossed her arms over her chest and glared, "Thou shall not belittle or slight the adventures of Son Goku or his band of Dragon Ball hunting warriors. That's why I hope Ichigo blows you away like he looks like he's going to." She said, informing Kensei of his impending doom.

"Huh?" Kensei turned around to find Ichigo charging a Cero at the tip of his claws on one hand, "Oh crap…" Kensei said with trepidation as he hurriedly drew his hands together over his Zanpakutou grip and generated a ball of energy in hands, pumping it backwards to centralize the power before thrusting his hands forward and firing off a white energy blast that matched Ichigo's Cero.

The red Cero and the white blast of Kensei's energy beam clashed together in a stalemate, pushing against one another until Kensei's mask appeared on his face in the appearance of a flat hockey face guard with three bands that went around the back of his head. Kensei shouted in a distorted voice as his attack began to overpower Ichigo's and send the possessed Substitute Shinigami back with the blast that pulverized rock and everything else that got in its way.

Kensei let his mask fade from view and smirked to himself in a satisfied manner, "Don't try to sneak up on me kid, you're a few years too early to try something like that."

"Yeah! Kensei with the Kamehameha for the win!"

"Goddamn it that's not what it's called!" Kensei snapped at Mashiro again, only to get her pointing behind him in response, "Really? He's back up already?" He turned his head to talk some more smack to Hollow-Ichigo, "You'd think you'd-."

That was as far as he got before Ichigo's tail forcefully smashed him through a nearby rock.

"Ooh." All of the Visoreds said from their position as spectators as they cringed along with the hit. Mashiro then shook her head pitifully, "Poor Kensei… he should have used Instant Transmission."

"Shut up!" Kensei yelled as he started freeing himself from the rubble. Once he got back to his feet and wiped the blood from his face, Ichigo roared at him and Kensei angrily yelled back at him before the two charged each other to continue fighting.

XxX

(Seireitei – 1st Division Barracks)

Yamamato looked out at Naruto and Yoruichi, standing out in front of him in the assembly room. At the moment, all of the other captains of the Gotei 13 were in attendance as well for the meeting, "The Captain of the 2nd Division, Soi-Fon, has given me the briefing of your actions in exploring Hueco Mundo." The old captain-commander had his eyes closed as he spoke, "The most important thing I've taken from what I've been told is that you can form a stable connection to Hueco Mundo anytime you wish to do so and then make it so that you can return."

"That's right." Naruto said, confirming Soi-Fon's earlier debriefing to Yamamoto after her return from her mission to the world of the living, "But I would rather not use my powers like that for no good reason." This was him being completely honest, "Some things that I'm capable of just aren't meant to be done on demand."

Seeing himself as a true sage, Naruto took his role as the bridge between the physical and spiritual world rather seriously. He had ever since he had found that he was able to see roaming spirits. He wasn't about to use the Gedou to jettison entire groups of Shinigami into Hueco Mundo to launch guerilla attacks. They wouldn't stop at just fighting Aizen's army, they would exterminate every Hollow or Arrancar they saw, and from Naruto's experience with Nel, Pesche, Dondochakka, and Gaara, he knew that there were those that roamed Hueco Mundo that weren't inherently evil (He left Hidan out of this group for obvious reasons). He was alright with dealing only with Hollows that roamed into the human world or the Soul Society to devour souls since there was no need for them to be there otherwise.

Yamamoto let out a pondering thought, "I surmise that mere monetary compensation would not be enough for me to barter passage for my forces to Hueco Mundo."

Naruto shook his head with a frown on his face, "Sorry, but no. I understand that there's a war brewing and I'll do what I can to stop that or help you out, especially since you're actually commissioning us for help for pay, but I won't just send Shinigami there for the sake of it." He pointed at Kenpachi, "Like say I let him go just for the hell of it. What do you think he'd do?" Kenpachi grinned at the prospect of being left to himself in Hueco Mundo, thus emphasizing Naruto's point.

Yamamoto raised an eyebrow, "While keeping the bloodshed to a minimum is understandable, A Shinigami's Zanpakutou purifies the Hollow's soul so that they may pass over to the Soul Society as pluses, peaceful souls. If we were to send our Shinigami in to hunt for Hollows it would be more of a good thing than a bad thing in any view."

Hearing that all Hollows were evil again made Naruto think of the ones that he had been acquainted with, and how scared Nel seemed when she had first met him and realized that Soi-Fon, Nemu, and Omaeda were Shinigami, "I'll say it again, I'm a sage. I hate killing, but sometimes it needs to be done. I cherish all sorts of existence, all forms of life and even souls. This isn't as black and white as you like to make it look. I'm not going to just start slaughtering Hollows for no reason." He wasn't about to directly start a genocide of any kind.

If Naruto didn't want to open the Gedou then not even the use of force would compel him to. He seemed to be that sort of person, and his abilities were unable to be duplicated thus far even with the studies that had been done by Kurotsutchi. The eyes of the old warrior opened to stare at Naruto sternly, "You have principles. I respect that. However if your principles run against the safety and protection of the Seireitei we will have an issue with one another Uzumaki-san. I would advise against that for your sake."

Naruto just nodded. Being a smartass would help no one in this situation. He had taken the measure of an entire group of the strongest in the world dead set on ending his life back when he was young, with an entire army backing them near the end, and after experiencing that he didn't feel like provoking a similar predicament again for absolutely no reason.

At this point Yoruichi stepped into the conversation, "We would never attempt to harm the Seireitei or any part of the Soul Society Yamamoto-sotaichou, but we reserve the right to pick and choose the assignments that we undertake." She put one hand on her hip as she kept up the serious atmosphere, "We are not a part of the Soul Society or the Seireitei at all; three of us are exiled from here as a matter of fact. The members of our group are handpicked and recruited from our own findings and we receive no mandatory reinforcement from the Gotei 13 unless it has already been confirmed that we're to work together."

"You've expressed this already." Yamamoto said candidly. He didn't want to let it be known, but both of the guests of the Gotei 13 probably already knew; having a rogue contingent aware and able to openly meddle with affairs of both the spiritual and living worlds didn't sit well with him. Especially with such formerly high-profile members such as Shihouin Yoruichi, Urahara Kisuke, and Tsukabishi Tessai in its ranks, all important figures in the Seireitei prior to their exile.

Still, they had done nothing wrong as far as he had seen yet. Not even the representative Shinigami currently stationed in Karakura Town in place of Kuchiki Rukia, Kurumadani Zennosuke had come up with anything negative in his periodic reports, though he had sent back intelligence on a series of skirmishes fought in Karakura between combatants with high levels of Reiatsu, though he was unable to arrive on the scene in time to bear witness to any of the event.

Yoruichi picked up where she left off before Yamamoto interjected, "Then you'll know that we're merely informing the Seireitei of our actions out of general courtesy. We intend to operate as intended regardless of your consent seeing as how we've refrained from breaking any laws that would have any bearing over the Soul Society."

'Man, Yoruichi-chan in captain mode is super-hot.' Naruto thought to himself, though he refrained from showing this on the outside, choosing instead to put up a unyielding front of solidarity with Yoruichi. It stood to be mentioned though that game face Yoruichi was certainly asserting their point as diplomatically as possible while still expressing one very important point.

The point was basically them saying: We don't want to step on any toes or anything and we actually want to help you, but no matter what happens here this group will not be disbanded since we haven't done anything that would make it an issue.

Ukitake took this moment to ask a question, "As a separate entity completely separate from the entire Soul Society, could we at least get a scope of your ranks? Maybe a short rundown of your active force?"

Naruto and Yoruichi both looked at each other before Naruto addressed the white-haired sickly captain, "I can't do that without compromising the security and possible safety of a few of our operatives, but I can tell you the first few members that joined. There's myself, Shihouin Yoruichi…" He said, gesturing to said Shinigami woman, "…Urahara Kisuke, Tsukabishi Tessai, the two young workers in Urahara's employ _might_ be members one day soon, maybe… and that's all I can give you at the moment." He said, sounding apologetic as he trusted Ukitake after he had attempted to assist him against Yamamoto during the attempt to save Rukia, "I have to protect my own people first in this instance."

Soi-Fon was the only one who knew why that was really important though, and unless the topic was brought to her she wasn't about to potentially betray Yoruichi… and Uzumaki as well she guessed. If it wasn't meant to be said then she wasn't going to blurt it out, especially since it really had no bearing on the overall safety of the Seireitei which was Yamamoto's primary concern.

Still, even off of what they heard from him that was one hell of a lineup by itself even without knowing who else the group had. Two ex-captains and the former Kidou Corps Commander… not exactly anything to sneeze at when it came to firepower by any stretch of the imagination.

At that juncture in the meeting, Shunsui decided to try and venture a question out since his best friend had just done so, though his was decidedly less serious. Not a bad thing, since the tension in the room had grown palpable by this point, "So this 'group' that you guys are making up… Do you even have a name for it, or are we just going to call you 'those guys'?"

Once again Yoruichi looked at Naruto who rolled his eyes; she could have told them the name he came up with on the way to the 1st Division Barracks just as easily as he could have. She was there and he told her what it was to keep her informed. Naruto cleared his throat before addressing the flamboyantly garbed captain and the others as well, "I guess you can call us Equilibrium." He said with a grin as he rubbed the back of his neck.

The small, white spiky-haired captain Hitsugaya Toushirou stepped forward, "So what exactly do you do? What's the point of your existence as a group?"

Yoruichi answered, "To do what needs to be done…" A small smile appeared on her face, "…For a fee more often than not. We'll be capable of doing the things that you can't or won't. We can go everywhere, even the places that you're not able to and get rid of the problems that you might not even know about if that's what we feel like doing."

'What is this, a TV commercial?' Naruto thought to himself, 'Good final sell to leave on though…' He had to admit with a shake of his head, "That's all we've got for you. That is, if that's all you need?" He asked as he turned back towards Yamamoto who thought for a moment before giving a nod, he wasn't going to get anything useful information-wise out of the pair as things stood. They shared all they had on Aizen and his Arrancar, there was nothing else urgent at the moment, "If you need us, you know how to reach us." Naruto said conclusively.

Yamamoto tapped his staff/Zanpakutou on the ground loudly, "In that instance, the meeting is adjourned. Everyone is dismissed and allowed to go back to their usual duties." He more or less ordered as the room began to clear out of the captains and the visitors, Naruto and Yoruichi, "If Shihouin-dono and Uzumaki-san would just wait for a moment however." He finished, getting the two to stop and turn around as everyone else left, "I have a request."

"A request?" Naruto repeated with a raised eyebrow before crossing his arms over his chest, "Will we be getting paid for this request?" He asked pointedly before catching a sharp elbow to the side from Yoruichi.

'Honestly…' Yoruichi thought to herself as she regained the group's poise in this situation. Naruto had tact and could orate well, but apparently his impetuous nature was just something that he couldn't keep under wraps for very long periods of time. If it hadn't been fixed by now then there was nothing Yoruichi could do at this point, "What do need us to do for you Yamamoto-sotaichou?"

"It's nothing major I assure you." Yamamoto stated in an exact manner, "…And yes, you will be compensated for this request if that really matters to you."

"We're listening." Naruto said, turning his eyes towards Yoruichi who happened to be giving him a light glare, "What? I'm not working my first actual assignment from the Seireitei for free… I haven't had an actual _paying _job in forever." He told her, emphasizing the 'paying' part of his statement since she technically never paid him for all of his trouble from assisting in the rescue of Rukia.

"It's a very simple job, not complicated at all." Yamamoto claimed, "You won't have to do any actual work at all come to think of it."

Even if there was no work for this 'job', neither of them liked the way that sounded. Naruto was reminded once again from the serene look on Yamamoto's face that he really didn't like old men that were still older than him. Because that meant that life experience still gave them at least one extra trick up their sleeve more than him.

XxX

(Nightfall – Karakura Town)

Uryuu was looking down in the back of an alleyway with his cell phone out and by his ear. The patrol around town for any possible Hollows on the prowl led to a strange discovery as darkness began to settle.

"_Ah, well hello there to you!" _Urahara's enthusiastic voice came over the other line.

Hearing the man's voice, Uryuu immediately launched into conversation, "Urahara-san, I think I've found something extremely-."

Urahara's voice then picked up once more, cutting Uryuu off, _"Thank you for contacting Urahara Shop. Your call is very important to us, unfortunately no one is able to reach the phone to help you at this time so please leave a message and I promise we'll get back to you at the soonest possible convenience!"_

"Goddamn it…" Uryuu muttered as he hung his phone up and pocketed it. He then kneeled down and reached a hand out to touch two lifeless bodies on the ground. They had no wounds on them and there was no sign of a Hollow attack anywhere around either as Uryuu adjusted his glasses on his face, "Why do these people look as if their souls were just sucked out of their bodies?" He asked no one in particular.

* * *

**Chapter is up and done people, and as always I hope you enjoyed and will continue to do so in the future. Now since I had to work at 2 am this morning and am still the walking dead from that endeavor I will now be sleeping for the next several hours and will physically assault any mortal fool enough to disturb my slumber.**

…

**Are you done laughing now? That's fantastic.**

**Anyway, I'll catch up with you guys later if the world allows it when I rejoin the world of the living this evening and maybe I'll try and crank out something else for the general populace to read, but I doubt I will. At least not even attempt to do so until tomorrow anyway…**

**Kenchi out. The graveyard shift has been a calling my name all week long. **

**And my paycheck has required me to respond to its beckoning.**


	19. Bountiful Harvest

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. I am currently throwing darts at my board that has a picture of Tite Kubo's face on it. It's all just practice for the real thing. I'm coming for you Kubo! Bleach will be mine! You'd better get some bodyguards, and good ones to boot because Kenchi is a vengeful man! No one has good ideas that I don't come up with first on my watch!

And when you're laying there, bodyguards all lain to waste with my boot planted firmly on your chest, with a pen in your hand as you sign a contract handing over the rights of Bleach to _me_, you're going to look up into my angry and determined eyes and you're going to say, "What in the hell was I thinking? That's Kenchi618! I never had a chance!"

...I might have gotten carried away with that last one.

**Chapter 19: Bountiful Harvest**

* * *

"My apologies Hidan-san." Tessai said in a stoic manner as he stood in the training ground of Naruto's base of operations. His frame was covered with the marks of battle and the frames of his glasses were cracked by whatever had occurred there. Even his mustache needed a touchup after what had just occurred, "It has been quite a while since I've been in an intense battle. I forgot sparring etiquette and used my higher level Kidou against you." In his defense, Hidan had monstrous Reiatsu and fought like a savage.

"Nah." Hidan said in a strained voice in his Gigai as he lay on the ground, "It was all good. I needed to fight someone tough as an Arrancar and if you'd pulled punches I might have cut you in half. It's not your fault my Gigai got in the way…" He looked down at his severed left arm, and chunk of his entire left side missing, "You can't kill my human body… this hurts like a motherfucker though."

A rather brutal spar between Hidan and Tessai ended with only one overwhelming casualty; Hidan's Gigai. He seriously needed to watch where he left that thing around at when he was using his Arrancar form… even if it couldn't technically die.

"Souten Kisshun (Twin Sacred Return Shield) I reject!"

Hidan then found himself surrounded in the glowing barrier, courtesy of Orihime, and sighed in relief as his injuries began to quickly heal, "I know I hate all you pacifist types and everything, but you're alright. When Jashin-sama rises up and takes this world I'll see what I can do to keep you alive girl."

"Thank you Hidan!" Apparently Orihime saw that as a perfectly feasible way of someone saying thank you to her. If anything, hanging around while Hidan picked fights with others got her tons of practice at healing, because he would leave his Gigai around haphazardly and it would get annihilated, thus requiring someone to fix it so that he could use it and move around after he was done fighting.

Yeah, Hidan definitely liked getting his body put back together this way. Orihime was faster than Kakuzu was unless he was _really _messed up, she was way nicer about it when she patched him up, and of course the view that he got was immaculate. Even a surly jerk like him had to admit that a pretty girl was way better to look at than an old guy in a mask, "Whatever Uzumaki is paying you he needs to pay you more because this healing thing you do is the best I've ever seen."

Orihime's face heated prettily at being complimented, especially by someone with such a normally poor disposition like Hidan. Though, the fact that his shoulder was now reattached to his torso by way of her doing probably had something to do with it, "It's practice I guess." She said before laughing sheepishly. She was damn sure getting a lot of it, that much was for certain.

At hearing that from her, Hidan gave her a very feral grin, "Well if that's the case then I'll just have to make sure that you get more of it right?" She could just put him right back together anyway.

All Orihime could do was give him a nervous smile, because she didn't like the sound of that whatsoever.

Meanwhile there was work to be done elsewhere in the training area that was quite busy on this day.

Gaara in his stood impassively as another of Chad's energy blasts bounced off of his Shukaku look-alike shield. Once again barely anything chipped off of the tightly compacted material but did nothing to the overall structural integrity of it, "You have to do better than that Sado-san." Gaara said calmly.

Chad stood panting as he stared down the tanuki-looking shield directly in his path. He knew he had put absolutely everything he had into that last blast so why was it still looking pristine? He saw pieces of it fly away.

Little did he know, Gaara was repeatedly reinforcing the shield after every attack Chad gave it. The smoke and dust kicked up from every blast obscured Chad's vision and allowed Gaara to pull up more minerals from the ground to use to reform parts of the shield. Gaara wanted Chad to smash it in one hit/blast though, instead of picking away at it, since if he could do that, there probably wasn't anything he couldn't destroy.

'It's impossible…' Chad thought to himself as he let the armor around his right arm fade, his exhaustion evident by this point. He had been going at trying to destroy Gaara's shield since he exited school that day. It had been like that every day since they had begun to train together, 'What on Earth is that thing made of, steel?'

Gaara could see the exhaustion in Chad, having fired nothing but full-powered blasts from his arm ever since the training session had begun, now being well after 9 pm. And then there was the matter of the fact that the younger members of the little group had homework and the like to take care of, "I think we should take a break." Gaara said, not leaving room for any argument as he then disappeared in a sand-based Shunshin.

He had homework to do as well. Front or not, Gaara was not about to look bad in a public forum for being 'stupid' like Naruto did by not showing up, sleeping in classes, and not doing homework… somehow Naruto was still passing, and simultaneously obliterating world history and geography classes.

Speaking of Naruto as well, he was working up quite a sweat in a mock battle with Yoruichi, both of them moving fast enough to avoid being flat out seen by anyone that wasn't used to moving that fast themselves.

They would trade strikes in the air and then back away, until Naruto decided to push forward as the aggressor and try to chase Yoruichi down, an attempt to wear her down that was very slow going, "Someone's angry." Yoruichi jibed as she hopped backwards and came to a stop just as a fist from Naruto smashed into the ground, "Someone's _very_ angry. Is the mission really that bad?"

Naruto grumbled to himself as he stood up and shook the gravel off of his fist, "This isn't a mission." Naruto stated, bouncing on his toes to stay loose, "We're on watchdog status. We were doing that before any of this happened at all, now we just have Jigokuchou (Hell Butterflies) to take care of."

"Don't forget that we're to take in another group of Shinigami to keep the Seireitei up to date on what's happening in the world of the living." Yoruichi said informatively before ducking a kunai thrown directly at her in response, "So _that's_ the thing that you're really pissed off about." She said in a 'eureka' moment.

"I am not running a goddamned boarding house!" Naruto yelled before again rushing Yoruichi swiftly, forcing her to move just as quickly to avoid being overtaken in his attack.

Sick of retreating, Yoruichi stopped running and threw a hard punch that met Naruto's own in a heavy smash of fists, "We're getting paid way more than this is worth Naruto!" She said as she ignored the thought that she might have broken her hand in that ill-advised clash, "So when the Shinigami representatives show up I want you to be good."

"Be good? I'm the fucking boss around here!" Naruto exclaimed, spinning in a grandiose manner, "I'll blow this entire base to bits if I feel like it! It's not like it's lined with Sekkiseki or something." He stopped spinning in time to block a Yoruichi flying kick that sent him sliding back a hundred feet away, "Do you think we could get Sekkiseki in here? That last idea actually sounds useful."

Yoruichi sprang back off of Naruto's block and smirked at watching him shake his arms out, she might have cracked the bones in them as hard as she kicked him, "Nope, can't bring it through any portal. All we've got here is the stuff you humans came up with over the last few thousands of years." She finished with a grin.

"Cocky aren't we?" Naruto quipped as he could already feel him bones starting to slowly heal. Before he could initiate another attack, a voice stopped him.

"Naruto-sensei how do I pop this damn water balloon?" Tatsuki shouted across the training room, holding said water balloon in one hand, "Spinning the water doesn't work!" This was an extremely troublesome technique to get down, but the Rasengan was sure to be worth it in the end. It was definitely the strongest fighting technique she ever had the opportunity to learn. Patience was not her strong suit though…

Naruto took his eyes off of Yoruichi to address his student who had interrupted his fight, "Yes it will! You're just doing it wrong!" He shouted back.

"Then tell me how to do it right!" Tatsuki said with a snarl in her voice. In the blink of an eye, Naruto was right in front of her with a frown on his face, surprising her and making her take a step back as he stared at her.

"Show me." Naruto said, before grunting and suddenly blocking another flying kick from Yoruichi, "Give me a second Yoruichi-chan, damn! I'm trying to teach here!"

Yoruichi merely chuckled and jumped back from her attempted surprise attack to land in a crouch, a predatory look in her eyes as if she was looking for another sneak opening, "You never said timeout…" She more or less purred. But even if he had indeed said timeout she wouldn't have listened anyway.

Naruto kept an eye on Yoruichi but was still watching Tatsuki as she tried to pop the balloon by spinning the water in it with her chakra. He could see the water only churning in one direction and took the balloon from her, "Pay attention because I'm only doing this one more time. What's the difference between when you do it and when I do it?" He asked before spinning the water with his chakra, quickly bursting the balloon.

Tatsuki growled slightly when the water from the balloon splashed on her, "It looked like the water was churning instead of just sloshing around when I did it. Am I supposed to spin the water in more than one direction?" She asked as she walked away to a nearby pile of water balloons to get a new one.

Naruto grinned at the fact that she picked up on what to do and was about to open his mouth when he sensed Yoruichi again and ducked a swinging kick aimed at his head, "Alright that's it! Jinton: Mankobushi (Swift Release: Ten Thousand Fists)!" Naruto leapt at Yoruichi and threw punches so fast she couldn't even see them.

'Wow!' She thought as Naruto's punches actually sent her in a full retreat. Yoruichi could feel her forearms taking all of the punishment from the repeated strikes that she swore could pulverize rock into pebbles, 'That's a new one!'

Meanwhile though, Tatsuki was lamenting the loss of one-on-one time with her new and very powerful mentor and was none too happy about it, "Can you two stop playing around for five minutes so I can get some help here?" She wished she was fast enough to chase them down, but Naruto didn't teach her how to do that yet. She couldn't even see Naruto or Yoruichi most of the time and she didn't ever think she'd be that fast.

"Pop the goddamn balloon!" Naruto yelled, splitting his attention between his student and his opponent, "What else do you want me to say or do? I'm in a fight here damn it!" Naruto turned back to Yoruichi fully to find her kneeling down with both hands on the ground, a grin firmly on her face, "And what do you think you're-?"

"Bakudou # 21: Sekienton (Way of Binding #21: Red Smoke Escape)!" From Yoruichi's hands on the ground, a massive plume of red smoke burst up, engulfing herself and Naruto. After a moment the smoke cleared and revealed Naruto in a ready stance all by himself without Yoruichi anywhere in sight.

"Damn it…" Naruto muttered to himself, scratching his whisker-marks. Sensing Yoruichi's Reiatsu was always a pain and he didn't want to get caught off guard in another sneak attack, if she was even still there at all. There was always a chance that she had just gotten bored and left altogether. Still, free time was free time, and with that he turned towards Tatsuki, "Now pop the balloon and I'm not answering another question until you do. I'm not here to spoon feed you the way to do things."

Tatsuki stared at him and then at the balloon in her hand before glaring at it in focus as the water started to churn. Once again, Naruto had to say that her control was way better than his when he took to learning the Rasengan because she only needed one hand to begin the process of moving the water in multiple directions.

After a few seconds the balloon popped, putting a look of elation on Tatsuki's face as she had finally gotten the step down, "I did it! It only took a few days!" She was about to break into a full-on celebration when she caught a rubber ball that was thrown right at her, "What the hell is this now?"

"Pop that." Naruto said, amused at how he had cut off her little celebration. He could see why Jiraiya used to do it to him all the time when he thought he had accomplished something, it was actually kind of hilarious to see her expression change, "It's not a water balloon this time, it's a rubber ball. They make the rubber out of lower quality stuff than when I had to do this step so it should actually be easier for you to pop it." He stifled a laugh when the look of concentration on her face bore no fruit by way of the ball popping.

Tatsuki tried spinning the chakra in the ball in a similar way, getting no positive reaction from the orb, "How am I supposed to pop this thing? Do I spin my chakra the other way? What's the trick this time?"

"Power." Naruto answered her question in a straightforward manner, "Your chakra needs to be as intense as you can make it to pop the ball. You've got to do it in a completely different way this time to learn how to make the Rasengan strong enough to do actual damage to the stuff you hit with it."

Getting the point, Tatsuki went back to focusing on the rubber ball in her hand, grunting loudly in exertion as she tried to will her chakra to burst the ball from the inside.

Naruto began escorting Tatsuki back over to the others as it was time to shoo the high school students on home, "That's the way Tatsuki-chan! Bully that chakra out!" Now it was time to see how long it took her to get _this_ step down.

XxX

(The Next Day – Karakura High School)

In an empty classroom, Naruto, Gaara, Orihime, Tatsuki, Chad, and Uryuu sat down to listen to what the Quincy of the group had to say about what he had recently found and had tried to take to Urahara and had failed.

"You found people with their souls sucked out… and couldn't sense anything else?" Chad asked, not seeing how those two things could have gone together, "If it was an Arrancar we could sense them couldn't we?" The surefire advantage they had was that they weren't going to be snuck up on by the Arrancar.

Naruto grimaced at the thought. He was no stranger to espionage, but he figured that he had a handle on making sure that he could feel the Arrancar in order to prevent any sneak attacks. But this didn't seem like an Arrancar thing. Why would they attract even the slightest amount of attention by killing normal people if they were really trying to stay hidden in their infiltration of Karakura Town?

"When is Ichigo coming back anyway?" Tatsuki asked, trying to interject in the conversation as she was still trying to pop the rubber ball in her hand, "He's been gone for more than a week." It wasn't nearly as long as being gone for the entire summer break, but a week was still a week and that was quite a while to go without hearing from someone.

Naruto addressed this fact, "He's still training with the people me and Urahara set him up with, but I'm thinking I might have to spring him soon. Me and Urahara can oversee the rest of his training on our own. Now don't worry about his training, worry about your own. Pop that ball damn it!" He demanded, getting Tatsuki to grumble and curse under her breath at him.

According to the Visoreds, Ichigo had managed to obtain control over his Hollow. Now it was just a matter of him learning how to fight and keep the mask that represented his Hollow powers on his face to augment his already formidable abilities. Right now all he could do was keep it on for only a handful of seconds.

So theoretically he could go and get Ichigo and bring him back to normal living… well, as normal as things got for Ichigo anyway. Still, he was not feeling up to dealing with getting bitched out by Shinji or Hiyori. It would probably be best to send a clone if he decided to get Ichigo back.

The way things sounded, Orihime didn't necessarily like the thought of fighting someone without the entire crew present and assembled so to speak, "So, what are we going to do?" She asked rather meekly. It was like a war room, except it was just a classroom.

"Ichigo is fine on his own." Gaara insisted calmly, "He is with those that are training him. They are most certainly not weak, thus this incident won't touch them."

Naruto stroked his chin in thought, "Yeah, I hear what you're saying, but Wonder-boy needs more seasoning. Besides, we need to see what he's gotten out of all of his training anyway. Once we know what we're dealing with I'm calling him back." There was no need to yank him out of his current training regiment prematurely before they even knew what they were facing.

Gaara then rocketed out another immediate question, "You going to call the Seireitei?"

"Fuck no." Naruto replied instantly, "They're already sending people. Why would I call them now? It's not like telling Yamamoto-jiji that this is happening and we don't what exactly 'this' is would make them send anyone any faster." He was going to save some face here and stay on top of the situation. Equilibrium was not going to look like they didn't know what they were doing only days after being recognized as a significant force by the Seireitei.

Uryuu frowned deeply as he tried to brainstorm, "We can't sense them… well at least I can't. Not until I felt a little spike of Reiatsu." He rubbed the bridge of his nose under his glasses, "When I arrived I found the bodies that had lost their souls." It was clear that he was relenting over the loss of his powers, even though there was nothing he could really do about that fact.

There had to be a way to find out just what was going on and to locate the culprit immediately. His sensing skills weren't very strong to search for things over a distance until he took the time to use Sage Mo-…

Naruto immediately stood up and walked out of the room, getting everyone's attention at how abrupt the action was, "Where are you going Naruto?" Chad asked, thinking that there might be some trouble that needed to be handled.

"To go be your living radar system." Naruto snapped as he reached the door just when the teacher opened it back up to come inside, ready to continue class.

"Uzumaki-san the lunch period is almost over." She said with her hands on her hips, "Where do you think you're going?"

Blinking at the woman blocking his path, Naruto set his hands on her shoulders and calmly yet swiftly switched their positions with him standing in the doorway and her standing in the classroom, "Bathroom? Yeah, I'm going to the bathroom for this stomach virus I caught. You don't want me anywhere near here for that so…" He then took off down the hall in a rush, "Later!"

The teacher let out a sigh as she looked down the hall where she swore she could see scuff marks from the rubber soles on Naruto's shoes lining the floor where he ran, "I swear I have the strangest students in my class. First Kurosaki running off at the drop of a hat and then Uzumaki never shows up and leaves at a whim…"

XxX

(Visoreds Hideout – Training Ground)

"Come on you dumbass!" Hiyori yelled as an incoming attack from Ichigo was easily defended. Her reason for being upset was his slow-moving growth when it came to using his Hollow mask, "Eleven seconds just isn't going to cut it in an actual fight!" She shouted as she delivered a kick to Ichigo's face to drive the point home.

Ichigo got back to his feet and glared, scuff marks all over his face from the kick he had just taken, "I know that!" He shouted back as he rubbed his face. Why did all of the short people in his life find it so necessary to inflict copious amounts of gratuitous violence on him? First Rukia and now Hiyori, "I'm trying to hold it as best as I can so shut up and let me work!"

Hiyori gave him a deadpan look before bringing her hand up to her face, her own mask with the prominent horn on the forehead taking form, **"Well if you still want to get your ass kicked that's just fine with me."** She said in her slightly distorted voice, warped by the power of the Hollow flowing through her, **"Bring it on."**

With that welcome invitation, Ichigo formed his own mask and leapt back at her with a yell of malicious intent.

Meanwhile, like usual, the other Visoreds were hanging out to the side not paying much attention, if any at all, to the current fight going on.

"Eleven seconds is a shoddy amount of time to keep the mask on for." Kensei remarked to himself as he was the only one really paying attention to Ichigo and Hiyori's little scrap, "I mean, first of all the guy took longer than Hiyori to get his Hollow under control and now this."

Shinji shrugged upon hearing his comrade's complaints, "Hey, at least he's not a dud. He pulled it off in the end didn't he?" He did agree though. Eleven seconds was hilariously bad. That didn't mean that there wasn't room for improvement though, and Ichigo certainly was impressive, "Wait, do we have to pay Naruto? Because he said that we owed him, but he never said _what_ we owed him."

Rose sat off, tuning his guitar calmly, "Are you kidding?" He said with a laugh, "None of us have money. What are we going to pay him with, all of the useless stuff we've got laying around the place?"

Lisa shook her head as she read a small orange book intently, "If we don't pay him somehow then Naruto's going to get us back."

Shinji laughed loudly at the idea of Naruto getting them back, "Get us back? How in the hell would he ever pull that one off? There's a barrier over the entire hideout and we never really leave. Good luck with that!"

Love rubbed his stubbly chin as he thought about what was being said, "Well… Naruto is _thousands_ of years old and he's strong. Really strong. We actually don't even know how strong he is, but that's not even really important. He's like an old man… and old men are wily and conniving. Even if he doesn't try to beat us up, which would be stupid trying to do that to all of us at once…" Everyone in earshot nodded in agreement. That indeed would have been very stupid, "But even if he doesn't try that, I still think he could do something to get us back because he keeps saying that he doesn't work for free."

"We're friends with Fishcake though!" Mashiro interjected brightly, "Don't we get some kind of 'friend discount' for his services, or even better a freebie?"

Love shook his spiky afroed head firmly, "Naruto says, 'If you want a hand-out call the United Nations, because I don't fight for free.' So no, he doesn't do freebies… unless we really need it." And they certainly didn't need his help to get Ichigo, it was just more convenient that way, "Maybe we can pay him in installments?"

XxX

(Late Evening – With Naruto)

"Karakura Town needs skyscrapers…" Naruto remarked to himself offhandedly. He was seated in a meditative position atop the highest building in town that he could find, which coincidentally wasn't that high at all. Several stories wasn't nearly high enough for him to get a good vantage position from. If he had been higher he could have easily sensed the slightest disturbance of energy amongst all of the people in town, now he had to focus intensely to distinguish between the unfamiliar and minute signatures of all of the townspeople assaulting his senses.

He could clearly feel two particular signatures that were moving towards him rapidly. Still, he didn't stand up and prepare to defend himself because both signatures had a hint of familiarity. Both of them, though he didn't know who they were felt similar to two other people that he did in fact know quite well.

"So you're the one producing that strange Reiatsu that I've been feeling around Karakura Town for months." A man wearing a plain grey suit with a light blue undershirt and tie adorned with blue crosses on it said in a cool manner from behind Naruto. He had silver hair and brown eyes along with a pair of glasses on his face, "You're not a Shinigami, but I don't particularly know what you are." The way he spoke was in a manner that Naruto found similar to Uryuu and his energy felt like a Quincy, also like Uryuu's since he was the only Quincy Naruto knew anyway.

"That's me, Uzumaki Naruto at your service." Naruto said, still sitting in meditative position, eyes shut to help him feel the energy around Karakura Town, "Are you Uryuu's dad? It's nice to meet you." He said in an honestly pleasant manner, "I'd get up to shake your hand and introduce myself the right way, but I'm kind of on the lookout for something right now."

Uryuu's father simply stared at Naruto's back with his arms crossed, "You're radiating energy like a living beacon. The same energy I've felt around Uryuu repeatedly. You're correct, I am Uryuu's father. I am Ishida Ryuuken." He looked over to the side and paused for the moment, "And I'm apparently not the only person that wishes to have words with you."

He seemed to be waiting for something, and that something appeared moments later in a blur right next to Ryuuken on the rooftop. It was a man wearing a Shinigami uniform, but he had a captain's haori attached to the back of a small piece of armor on his left shoulder. He was a tall man with spiky black hair and brown eyes. He had a stubble beard and was looking between Naruto and Ryuuken.

"You're late Isshin." Ryuuken said matter-of-factly, "If he had wanted to leave and if I weren't here he could have disappeared before you managed to make it from your clinic."

Isshin let out a slight growl, "Well excuse me, some of us have kids that we don't need knowing that we do this so I had to make my own opening." He then turned his attention to Naruto, "I've felt your signature around Ichigo quite a bit since right before the summer began. It's not really my style to pry into my son's life and all of that, but I don't really know a thing about you. And you're very strong, so forgive me if I don't feel safe leaving Ichigo in your hands."

Naruto grinned without moving otherwise, not that they could even see it, "I'd like to say that I'm Ichigo's boss, but since he hasn't really done anything for me yet I can't. Same for Uryuu, but he actually has done some work for me. Even without his powers the guy keeps his ear to the ground just in case."

"Boss?" Isshin said questioningly, "Boss for what? Ichigo isn't with the Seireitei unless you count the Substitute Shinigami thing, which I don't."

Ryuuken's eyes hardened almost unnoticeably at hearing the words 'Seireitei' used in conjuncture of anything to do with his son, "Uryuu knows not to show his back to anyone having anything to do with Shinigami. His own mistake in going there this summer and losing his powers was his choice however."

Letting out a sigh, Naruto decided that it was time to explain to the parents what was going on. What a bother, "I am a part of a group that is tasked with watching over this neck of the world of the living. I'm just a normal human being… that's not really normal at all. Just like Ichigo and Uryuu's friends… only not anything like any of them at all." He then realized how contradictory that sounded, "Does any of that make sense?"

Isshin nodded stiffly, "You're not a soul, you're a living being. And you're like those other children that are touched with powers, only you're not 'touched', everything you're capable of is all yours."

"Close enough." Naruto replied earnestly, "But I pay Uryuu for him working with me, and I'll pay Ichigo too if he ever starts. We're a really small group."

"You must be hurting for help if you believe my son is a useful commodity to your efforts." Ryuuken said succinctly, "Without his powers he's just a sitting duck waiting to be taken down. He shouldn't be meddling in the affairs of the dead. Nothing good comes of it. He should focus on protecting the living if he feels he should protect anything."

"Nothing's going to happen to Uryuu." Naruto said determinedly, "Powers or not…" He then switched gears, "And who's to say he can't do both? I've been doing one for years, as far as I'm concerned protecting the other isn't that different from one… it's just weirder." And that wasn't even by very much in Naruto's opinion. Nothing he had seen since he had begun to deal with the dead had been that far out of his realm of normalcy thus far.

Isshin stepped forward, "So does that mean you know where Ichigo happens to be right now?"

"Ichigo's training with some friends of mine but I'm about to get him and bring him back any day now." Naruto felt alright with telling Isshin this because he didn't exactly seem to be a Seireitei sanctioned Shinigami either. Besides, he was the kid's dad, there wasn't an issue of telling him that much since he couldn't find the Visoreds without already knowing where to look, "He'll be back, sulking all over your house in no time." Naruto assured Isshin, "Until then Kon's filling in for him."

A nod that Naruto couldn't see came from Isshin, "The Mod Soul inside of his body. I know."

At that moment, Naruto's eyes snapped open, revealing the telltale eyes of Sage Mode to finally take in the low light of the nearly set sun and he jumped to his feet, nearly alarming Isshin who had been closest to him, "I'd love to talk to you guys some more, but I have to go. I've got a hunt to get to. Sorry." He said before running towards the edge of the building and jumping off without fanfare.

This left the two older men standing atop the building alone. Ryuuken was the first to comment, "That's one strange young man." He then saw Isshin shaking his head, "What the matter with you?" He asked as he calmly placed a cigarette in his mouth.

"There's nothing young about that guy." Isshin said with a slight chuckle, "That Reiatsu is grizzled. No young man or young anything has an aura like that."

XxX

(Urahara Shop – Early Nightfall)

"I don't see how this is a good idea." Hidan said abruptly as he sat at Urahara's table, staring up at what he had come over to check out in the stead of Yoruichi who was manning the base waiting for the arrival of the Shinigami meant to stay with them for the time being and Naruto who was off playing early warning radar in town. He thought it would have something to do with Nel, but the child-like Arrancar was as normal as ever, and to make things annoying for Hidan she was no longer afraid of him since by now she knew he would not hurt her, thus he was now in 'playmate-realm' as far as she was concerned, "Aren't those things illegal?" He asked, trying to ignore Nel climbing up his back as he pointed at the three figures standing behind Urahara.

Opening his fan in amusement to Hidan's reaction, Urahara let out a chuckle, "Well check out the big brain on Hidan! I guess Naruto or Yoruichi drilled into your head what was legal and illegal in this world to make sure you didn't do something you shouldn't." Hidan grumbled in response, but Urahara simply went ahead with why he called someone from Naruto's base to come over, "Say hello to Noba, Kuroudo, and Ririn. Mod Souls that I've created." He also did not acknowledge that yes, they were illegal by the standards of the Soul Society.

Noba seemed to be a young man wearing a fur coat and a blue undersuit that went up into a zippered mask that was open to reveal red bangs of his hair and blue eyes. On his back he had a blue shield. Kuroudo was a man that had glasses, a small mustache, and long hair that was half blonde and half black. He wore a grey tie and top hat and had on a multicolored suit that was grey, black, and red in places. Ririn was a small young woman with short blonde hair and bright blue eyes. She wore a long pink coat with fur trimming the edges and over that a black cloak of some sort along with high red boots.

Hidan just stared at them dryly, still ignoring Nel who was marveling at his slick-backed hair at the moment, "Yeah… I don't say 'hello' unless I'm saying, 'Hello, I'm about to kill you!' So I'm not going to be doing that shit. Why am I here damn it?" They weren't even feeding him so he wasn't getting anything out of this trip, he really was Naruto's gofer wasn't he? He thought he should have been more upset over that fact than he actually was.

"What a brute." Kuroudo said before paling slightly when Hidan turned his head towards him to give him the collected killer blank stare, "W-We're meant to help you." He managed to stammer out through Hidan's 'unintentional' killing intent.

Hidan cocked an eyebrow, "Help us what?" He asked, finally prying Nel off of his head and holding her in front of his face, "Stop." He said sternly, only getting an amused laugh from the small girl. He rolled his eyes and put Nel down before turning his attention back to the new people he hadn't met yet, "But yeah, what do we need help with?"

Urahara pointed right at Hidan, "You completely suck at sensing anything less than the most blunt outpouring of energy." He could sense Hidan's Reiatsu spike angrily at the blunt declaration, "You know it's true. That's not going to work because of the very special Reishi that constitutes your new enemy's energy. It's almost like they're not using any at all, you could never find it."

"Fuck. You." Hidan said dully, but he knew that was true, "We have new enemies? What happened to the Arrancar of that Aizen jerk that we fought not too long ago?" His tone switched to one of excitement. New enemies meant he would probably get to fight. Fighting meant he might get to kill someone other than the drone-like Hollows that he usually tore apart whenever he decided to go to Hueco Mundo.

Urahara shrugged and scratched his head underneath his hat, "They haven't tried anything since the last attack. We can feel when a Garganta is torn into the world of the living, well nothing like that has happened this time."

"This is a completely new enemy." Ririn said before pointing to herself, a confident smile on her face, "Luckily we can locate the ones that you're supposed to be looking for now easily. So suffice it to say, you'd be lost without us."

Hidan just stared them all down blankly before grabbing Nel and putting her on his shoulder, "Downstairs now. Let's see how lost I'd be without once I see what use you three are." And with that, Hidan marched downstairs taking Nel along for the ride, why he did so he had no idea, but it seemed like a good idea, "Pay close attention kid." He said to Nel, "You're about to see Hidan-ojisan kick some upstart ass."

Once he arrived downstairs however he paused mid-step, seeing that Ririn, Noba, and Urahara were all down there, seemingly waiting on them. Hidan looked back at the ladder he had just climbed down and over at the Mod Souls, fighting the urge to ask them how the hell they got down there so fast.

He opened his mouth to speak when he heard a familiar voice speak behind him that froze him cold, "Hidan I give you a job to do and then I find you picking a fight when I come to check up on you?" Hidan turned around to see the form of Yoruichi giving him a stern look, "What do you have to say for yourself?"

Hidan was prepared to defend himself verbally but stopped and simply stared at Yoruichi before placing Nel on the ground, "I say that you're not Yoruichi!" He yelled as he pulled his cylinder from around his neck and extended it to its full pike form to launch himself at 'Yoruichi'.

Just as his feet left the ground from his direct attack, a red field appeared behind 'Yoruichi' with Noba inside of it. The Yoruichi copycat jumped inside, forcing Hidan's brazen attack to miss. Noba and the copy of Yoruichi wound up standing back with Ririn and Urahara, the red field from before having dissipated from their previous use. Hidan scoffed at his miss without turning back around to face them, "I'm slower in my Gigai. Let's see you try that again." He said as he stabbed himself with his pike and ejected his soul from the body, leaving him in his Arrancar form.

As he turned around to face off with the three Mod Souls he was slightly taken aback as the normal barren, mountainous training ground was no longer in view, instead he found himself standing inside of what looked to be the inner workings of a large clock. He quickly drew his scythe and held it at the ready, licking his lips in anticipation.

In a speedy motion, the body of the Yoruichi copy appeared behind Hidan, but Hidan merely turned and blocked with his scythe, grinning madly as he did so, "Yeah, you're not Yoruichi. You're fast, but not Yoruichi fast. And that kick would have at least made me move if it had actually been her. Nice try though." He said, shoving the fake Yoruichi off, "You don't fight like her either."

The Yoruichi copy smirked deviously, "How'd you know I wasn't Yoruichi-san before we even really fought?"

"Yoruichi wouldn't have said anything to me first if she was really upset with what I did." Hidan said with a deadpan expression, "She would have kicked the shit out of me first, _then_ she would have said something. Now please let me bifurcate you in peace." Hidan said before vanishing with a low boom, a sign of his use of Sonido.

'Yoruichi' seemed to sweat slightly when Hidan began to move, and the follow-up attempt to keep up with him nearly failed because as Hidan said, this person wasn't as fast as the real Yoruichi. It wasn't even close, and Hidan's scythe came close to cutting the enemy in two.

"Noba!" The fake Yoruichi called out as Hidan cocked his fist back, allowing red energy to form around it.

"Bala (Hollow Bullet)!" Hidan launched the projectile energy attack just as Noba landed in front of the false Yoruichi and created another red field to block the attack from hitting both of them. Hidan's Bala flew into the field and disappeared right before he felt something strike him in his back and explode, knocking him to the ground on his face. He pulled himself up to see Noba standing in front of what used to be a copy of Yoruichi, now Kuroudo, "What the hell?"

"This guy is way too strong for us." Kuroudo said looking at Hidan warily, "I can't copy enough of what Yoruichi-san can do to be a threat to him in an actual fight."

"I'm glad you realize that." Hidan said in a seething voice, angry that somehow his own Bala wound up being fired at himself, "Now please die for me." Hidan held up one hand in a half-tiger seal and formed a purple Cero in his other hand, prepared to just fire and obliterate them the second one of them made a wrong move.

Kuroudo took a step back, "Noba… redirect that would you."

Noba spoke his first words as the masked Mod Soul looked at Hidan's energy blast warily, "I'm not sure I can…"

"Bakudou #61: Rikujoukourou (Way of Binding #61: Six Rods Prison of Light)!"

Six yellow beams of light slammed into Hidan's body on all sides and froze him in place, "Oh Goddamn it! Not again! Let me out Urahara or you're next!"

"I can't let you blow the Mod Souls to hell Hidan." Urahara said, walking into sight from seemingly nowhere, "You can let the illusion fall now Ririn." At his request, the scene changed and returned back to the barren training ground it had been in the first place.

Ririn then popped up from behind a rock, "Oh, and I was just about to give that Hidan a hit he'd never forget." She said as she moved over to the amassed Mod Souls, Shinigami scientist, and trapped Arrancar.

"Urahara let go of the fucking Kidou!" Hidan snapped again, "Oh you're so lucky I can't go Resurrección on your ass without tipping off the Shinigami, because there's no way in hell this flimsy shit would hold me then." Just being pissed wasn't a good enough reason to unload his full power as if it were a toy. His Reiatsu wasn't exactly subtle even in his normal Arrancar form.

Ignoring Hidan's ranting, Urahara gestured to the Mod Souls, "Well at least now you've seen that they're not just for sensing your new enemies. Noba can teleport anywhere he wants and can even teleport ranged attacks like your Bala. Kuroudo can shapeshift into any person's appearance and can take on their voice, he can even mimic some of their abilities to use in combat. Ririn can make illusions to fool opponents, she was just a little nervous to do anything more than change the battlefield appearance after you let your Reiatsu loose."

"I wasn't scared or anything." Ririn said in a manner of flimsy defense, "I just thought that Noba and Kuroudo were better suited to handle you, that's all." Just as she said that, Urahara dropped his Kidou's hold over Hidan and the Arrancar appeared in front of Ririn, leaning down to get in her face, stopping her statement in her tracks.

"Boo." Hidan said plainly, getting a satisfied look on his face when Ririn shrieked and jumped back behind Urahara. He let out a cruel chuckle and looked at Urahara, "How do you keep making stuff like this?" He asked, "You must be burning through your pay to afford what you need."

"Not as much as you'd think." Urahara said with a laugh before getting somewhat serious, "Especially since I actually know what we're up against with this new threat Uryuu found. I want you to bring these guys to Yoruichi at your base and tell her that we've got Bounts to deal with."

XxX

(With Naruto)

Underneath a darkened bridge, Naruto stared down at the body of a person with their soul drained, "…Just like Uryuu said…" If he hadn't been in Sage Mode, thus making him extra sensitive towards the energy of all living creatures that he could sense, he would never had felt the tiny amount of a normal person's spirit begin to vanish. He was too late to save the person though, as he hadn't been anywhere near the signature when it began to drop off.

Backing away from the deceased civilian, Naruto ran a hand through his hair and let out a sigh that turned into a growl before he began to walk back onto the streets from under the bridge. He was still dressed in his school garb since he hadn't gone back to base before taking up his position sitting and waiting on some suspicious activity to take place, 'I've got to get a handle on this quick… There's no way I can let this kind of thing keep happening as long as I'm here to do something about it.' Taking care of things like this were the entire reason he was able to accept his own existence, thus it irked him intensely that people were still dying around him.

As he continued to walk onwards aimlessly, wondering if he should try again to locate an attack with Sage Mode, a soft song began to fill his mind. It was a rather calming one that he hadn't heard for hundreds of years, one that he remembered particularly liking, thus he allowed himself to let his mind drift if only for a moment.

A moment turned out to be far longer than he thought, as when he regained his bearings Naruto found himself standing out in front of an abandoned hospital, only one single person in the vicinity standing in front of him, 'Gah, damn genjutsu! I fucking hate being hypnotized!' He thought to himself, his muscles tensing in response to the sight of the shadowy figure standing in front of him. Even though whatever had happened to him wasn't genjutsu, it didn't change the fact that whatever had happened had been akin to it, and he despised the indirect arts of combat. Needless to say, after being suckered along for what he had presumed to be miles Naruto was ready for a fight.

The shadowy figure slowly walked forward into the moonlight and Naruto's sight. It was a woman with brown hair, brown eyes, and red lipstick. She was very attractive, but Naruto didn't care much about looks when someone was about to attack him. She wore an olive-colored collared shirt and a red tie with a brown vest over it as well as black pants and shoes. On her right hand was silver bracelet and on her left hand was a silver claw on her middle finger.

The thing was though, that she was looking at Naruto as if she had seen a ghost. Her face was almost pale at the sight of him and her mouth was slightly agape in shock. She then schooled her features when she realized that Naruto was still set for battle, "You… don't remember me do you?" She said with a slight laugh, though her face was far from amused.

"Maybe I do, maybe I don't." Naruto said, ready for action and debating the merits of rushing in or getting his distance depending on how this person fought, "I've been around for a while so refresh my memory."

"Yes… quite a while." The woman said quietly before narrowing her eyes in a glare on him, "Try around 250 years. Namikaze Naruto." She spat spitefully.

Naruto's eyes snapped wide open at hearing that name used. He had repeatedly changed his name throughout his life and that had been the one he had kept for the longest time. He hadn't gone by that name since it became a habit for international records to be kept, thus he began switching between more diverse names than his mother and father's surnames. But 250 years? Who the hell did he know 250 years ago that would actually be alive _and_ remember who he was? No, forgetting that, if this woman knew him 250 years ago then how on earth was she even alive in the first place?

He wasn't even able to legitimately see complete souls until around fifty or sixty years ago so it wasn't that, and this was a living, breathing woman, which meant that she was just that back then, 'How the hell does anyone that knows who I am exist for that long?' Naruto thought to himself before speaking, "How do you know that name and who are you? Why are you attacking people?"

"I thought you were dead… at first I thought there was no way it was really you." The woman said lowly, blatantly ignoring his questions, "And then I thought that I was currently standing in front of a strong descendant… But no, I don't know how but you're actually him. You're Naruto. And yet you're not a Bount, you're a 'sage' correct? Am I still right about that?"

Naruto had no clue what a Bount was, but it was now abundantly clear that this lady knew who he was, "Hey! Answer my questions!" He demanded heatedly.

The woman calmly closed her eyes, ignoring Naruto's outburst, "If you don't remember my face then I doubt you remember my name, but I'll give it to you anyway before I send you to hell for abandoning me Naruto. My name is Yoshino, Souma Yoshino."

At that, Naruto started racking his brain trying to think of anyone named Yoshino that would have any reason to know who he was, but he was drawing a blank. Unfortunately for him he was given no more time to ponder the identity of the woman that knew him as she drew her single finger claw to her bracelet with a hateful look in her eyes, "Zeige Dich, Goethe (Show Yourself, Goethe)!"

The moment she scraped her bracelet with the claw and formed a spark in doing so, a fire formed in an arc above her head before rapidly spreading all over the area. A humanoid figure of fire and magma appeared in front of Yoshino with fire for hands below its forearms and fire for legs beneath the knee area.

Having dealt with Yamamoto's Zanpakutou, Naruto wasn't that far removed from dealing with oppressive heat, but even still the flames from whatever Yoshino had just done were making him sweat.

'Who the hell are you Yoshino?' Naruto thought to himself right before the fire construct rushed at him to attack. Something was starting to nag at him about the face of the woman that was opposing him though, 'And what are you not telling me that I should know?'

* * *

**Yeah. A short little stint with the Bounts. What? It's totally logical. I'm not going to speed through cutting down the bad guys and the good guys in the main conflict against Aizen, and the entire arc itself while long in the actual anime, once you get past the long part is actually straightforward and easy to understand. Perfect for what I need the characters for, and there is a need, especially since I'm not going to redo that arc tit for tat. Remember that I am aware of the things that I do and I usually have a plan or course of action set before I do anything. For those that rather enjoy the things that I do, have I not your earned trust by now?**

**Don't answer that since I'll probably get like 60 reviews to the contrary about stuff that I probably forgot about.**

**The way this will go it probably won't take long at all anyway.**

**Anyway, hope you enjoyed, hope you have a good remainder of your week, and I'll catch you the next time I update something that you actually read.**

**Later all, Kenchi out.**


	20. Never Turn Your Back, Even On Your Past

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. I am starting a fund for the research of superpowers or the ability to use kinetic or potential energy to utilize superhuman skills. In 50 years I'm going to be all over the news as the man that has ushered in a new era of human growth. And my specialized drug that gives you superpowers will be like Russian roulette. You can only take it once and can only get one power… and you DON'T get to pick what power it is because it's random and is based on what effect the drug will have on your physical structure. For example you could get the ability to fly, super strength, shoot laser blasts from some part of your body, or you could get the ability to turn into The Thing with all of the powers that come with such.

Tell me you wouldn't cough up 5000 bucks for that chance?

And I'll be rich as hell!

…I guess I should start at the very least minoring in biology if that's a viable plan to make my fortune huh?

Enjoy the chapter.

**Chapter 20: Never Turn Your Back… Even On Your Past**

* * *

The attack of Yoshino's fire creature Goethe came quickly at Naruto as the blonde shinobi was ready to react in a hurry. It was a good thing that he did because on Yoshino's direction, Goethe's first move was to fire a jet of flames at Naruto who quickly dodged and formed five Kage Bunshin to test the waters. Upon getting close enough to Goethe to strike, only one clone was able to lay a hand on Goethe as it landed a punch, however this only wound up with the clone burning itself and dispelling. The other attacking clones were then destroyed by a torrent of flame that came from the fiery figure.

"It stands to reason that you have powers of your own especially if you've lived this long." Yoshino commented after seeing Naruto's Kage Bunshin technique, "Too bad it won't be enough!" Goethe once again attacked headlong in an attempt to burn Naruto alive with a jet of flame directed right at him.

'Come on, who did I know or meet in the last two hundred years that actually had powers and could do anything like this?' Naruto thought to himself as he jumped into the air and dodged the fire by sticking to the side of the outside wall of the abandoned hospital. The anger she had in her eyes directed at him made him desperately want to know who this woman was supposed to be to him, but for now he was in a fight, 'If I can take out her fiery little friend then I can think about who she is for as long as I want to.'

With that in mind, Naruto pulled out the hilt of the Raijin no Ken (Sword of the Thunder God) and extended the glowing yellow blade with his chakra, prepared to cut through whatever he had to. Goethe rushed at Naruto and attempted a flaming punch that missed and wound up smashing a hole through the wall Naruto had just been standing on. This was a mistake that was not allowed to be rectified as Naruto cleaved straight through Goethe, birfucating the fiery humanoid creature and letting it drop to the ground in a heap.

'He's so fast.' Yoshino thought as she barely saw Naruto stop moving long enough to cut through Goethe before he disappeared from view again and reappeared ten feet away from her, "It hurts to be forgotten Naruto… but as a Bount I'm actually pretty used to such a thing."

"Tell me how you know who I am." Naruto demanded with hard eyes, "Your little fire thing isn't getting back up, so I want some answers here. What exactly did I do to you?"

Yoshino merely let out a bitter laugh in response, "My dear doll Goethe isn't that easy to defeat. You can't destroy him like that, he'll just regenerate." Almost as if it was in response to her very words, a large blast of fire erupted from behind Naruto and engulfed his entire body. The shocked look on his face was the last thing Yoshino managed to see from him before her doll covered him in flames, "I really don't think you can do the same thing even if you have lived this long."

"Shinra Tensei (Subjugation of the Omnipresent God)!"

With that call of the specialized ninjutsu, the flames were forced away with a massive burst of gravity that seemed to shove it aside, leaving Naruto standing there with his school clothes singed and partially burnt and light burn marks on his person. They were already healing though as he stared her down with his Rinnegan active and out, "You'd be pretty surprised if you think I can't…" He extended his sword hand towards Yoshino and made a 'come hither' gesture with his index and middle fingers, "Banshou Ten'in (Heavenly Attraction of All Creation)!"

Yoshino found her body suddenly pulled towards Naruto as the man cocked his free hand back to deliver a punch, but before she was pulled in far enough to take the hit Goethe grabbed her and snatched her up out of Naruto's gravitational pull. Not willing to let them get off scot-free, Naruto jumped after them and wound up getting above them before delivering a hard kick to the back of Goethe, sending both the doll and the Bount crashing to the ground.

Goethe turned so that he was able to cradle and protect Yoshino during the crash as his fire and magma body dragged a hot trench through the ground. Yoshino got herself up from Goethe's protection and glared at Naruto before he vanished from sight again. Goethe jumped back up and unleashed a rush of flames that went up in a ball that surrounded himself and Yoshino.

Naruto stopped himself from trying to force his way through the ball lest he get himself burned again and slip into a trap. A grumble escaped Naruto's lips, 'And there's no water around here for me to use to put this bastard's flames out.' He'd never pull enough immediate moisture from the atmosphere to create any jutsu strong enough to extinguish Goethe and ripping up the ground to find a water pipe was out of the question even if he had the time to search for one.

From the large defensive ball of fire, smaller, yet still very large, fireballs flew Naruto's way, forcing him to spring back out of the way of danger. A fireball that got too close to Naruto was kept away when Naruto took the Raijin no Ken and batted it away like a softball, sending it exploding into the side of the nearby abandoned hospital. The area of the battlefield was turning into something of a firepit.

"It's time to show you how a master uses this thing." Naruto said, holding the Raijin no Ken out and moving his free hand underneath the bottom of the hilt, forcing another glowing yellow blade to extend, now giving twin blades on both ends of the hilt. Naruto began rotating the sword rapidly as lightning began to crackle off of the weapon and it became a spinning yellow blur. He held the spinning weapon above his head and thunder began to sound in the sky, "Raijuu (Lightning Beast)!"

A bolt of lightning struck the weapon from the sky and reflected back up in a multiple branching pattern. From the sky, larger bolts of lightning started spontaneously hitting the ground along the battlefield, this forced Goethe to release his defensive fireball before it wound up being struck by lightning and assisted Yoshino in dodging the attacks while Naruto just held still and seemed to be directing the mostly wild lightning by spinning his sword above his head and keeping his powerful eyes locked onto Yoshino and Goethe.

Yoshino separated from Goethe as Naruto's lightning eventually struck the doll of fire and began battering it mercilessly with electricity in an attempt to utterly destroy it. The force of the lightning jutsu eventually turned Goethe into rubble at which point Naruto finally stopped spinning the Raijin no Ken and let his jutsu drop, "There… regenerate that."

"Well since you asked so nicely." Yoshino said as Goethe did just that right before Naruto's eyes, reforming as if Naruto had never pulverized the doll with repeated strokes of lightning from the sky, "You walked away and you never even said goodbye. I thought you were better than that." She said bitterly, "I thought you understood what it meant to not belong, and now that I know that you survived this long without aging a day it makes me hate you even more."

Hearing that from Yoshino got Naruto to grit his teeth angrily as he had been racking his brain trying to figure out how she knew him, 'I never even hung around anyone long enough for them to remember anything about me! The last time I ever even stopped anywhere long enough for any person to be friends with me was in Germany-.' His eyes then widened at the spark of memory that ripped through his head, "No, I _do _know you…" He didn't know what else to say other than that.

When he knew Yoshino she definitely didn't have powers, at least none that he could sense. She was just a lonely woman that he met in a Prussian village that somehow got attached to him during the repeated wars around the German area in the mid 1700s. He wound up leaving in a failed attempt to try and prevent the Seven Years' War from beginning and stayed busy in subsequent attempts to end it which had also failed. Ensuing attempts to do so wound up blacklisting him from basically all of Europe as an urban legend and criminal, forcing him to leave for Far East Asia (Japan in particular) until the 1850s.

"It took you long enough didn't it?" Yoshino said tauntingly with her hands on her hips, "I waited for you to come back but you never did. I waited so long that the people around me clearly aged while I stayed the same and they chased me away as if I were a monster. I wanted to die myself as much as they wanted me dead. You were the only person I felt comfortable with, that I felt truly understood me… until _him_." She finished hatefully, with more spite than she had already been speaking to Naruto with.

"How was I supposed to know you had powers and you were immortal?" Naruto defended verbally, his desire to fight having faded away once he realized that she had been a friend, "You never said anything! You never talked about yourself when you were anywhere near me, ever! And I couldn't just stay either!"

Not only were there too many things happening all over Europe and the entire world at the time, if he had stayed for any reason as long as Yoshino apparently had then the same suspicions that had been thrust onto her would have been cast upon him as well. He had been alive for more than long enough by that point to know that normal people didn't take decades of youthful appearance passively, so even if he wanted to stay in one place he wouldn't be able to... besides, he hated overusing Henge for that reason, he liked the way he looked.

"I didn't know that _you_ had powers and that _you_ were immortal! I just thought you were a travelling mercenary!" Yoshino fired back, "If I had known that and even if I had shown you… you probably would have just tried to kill me like the others! Thinking I was a monster just like them!" She abruptly shut up however when she felt a rise of rather angry power from Naruto as he started radiating black chakra off of his person.

"You're going to stand there and compare me to some idiots that would just attack a person because they found out they were different?" Naruto asked, biting back his voice from raising any higher, though it was quite clear that he was angry. In his anger, Naruto punched the ground with a massive yell, forcing the ground to rock harshly from the magnitude. Following the punch, cracks from the ground branched off from his point of impact and shook into the decrepit old hospital nearby, bringing the entire front wall of the abandoned facility shaking and crumbling down, "If we were really close then you would have known that I would _never_ attack first and ask questions later! Especially a friend!"

Just the idea of anyone comparing Naruto to any sort of witch-burning bigots that he had seen countless numbers of in his time in existence made him greatly upset. He had become desensitized to most of the violence that seemed to surround his endeavors, but that always seemed to be his pet peeve going right up there with people questioning his personality and taking his normally bright persona as a sign of ignorance towards the way the world was. It was even worse coming from someone that 'knew him'.

The chakra radiating off of Naruto was intense and full of mal intent, so much so that Yoshino began backing away from him, 'This is Naruto's power? Where was this back when I knew him? I could never sense anything from him at all back then!' The almost invisible silhouette of mammoth black tails seemed to flicker around Naruto's body like ghosts to a normal person in Yoshino's eyes, 'I don't know enough about him to fight him here.' She looked around for an opening to escape and beat a temporary retreat until she could at least figure out what she was possibly dealing with from Naruto.

Meanwhile with Naruto himself he knew that there was something wrong. Not only did he seem to get far angrier than he otherwise would have in response to what Yoshino said about him, he most certainly did not consciously trigger pulling up any special chakra from the creature sitting deep within him. He had to take time to collect himself and calm down with deep breaths in order to rein himself in.

'I've only really lost myself like that when it looks like the Juubi is about to wake up…' Naruto thought to himself through his loud breaths, taken to keep himself calm, 'This is not good. It hasn't even been long since the last time I fought it. How could it be waking up so soon?' He figured that he had several hundred more years before he had to even worry about preparing himself again, but he was certain that he wasn't mistaken in what he was feeling.

"Naruto!"

Naruto turned around and saw Yoruichi appear before him with a look of worry on her face. Feeling that he was even-tempered once more, Naruto walked over to the feline-themed woman, "Yoruichi-chan. You found me." He looked around and clicked his teeth in disappointment. His little episode scared off Yoshino and gave her time to actually escape. He simply couldn't feel her energy signature without being in Sage Mode or in his jinchuuriki state, and even then it was faint.

A frown came over her face, "You were pouring out a terrible energy from your body. I'd be surprised if any spiritually aware being in Karakura Town didn't feel it, I was just the first one here." She looked around at the fiery battlefield and the mostly demolished hospital building, "Are you alright?" She asked, taking note of his singed and burned clothes, though by now his minor wounds had long since healed.

"I'm fine." Naruto assured her. How was he supposed to explain anything that had just occurred though? It wasn't exactly something he was eager to share, 'Oh hey, you know the soul-sucking going on around Karakura Town? I know the woman doing it! I let her escape too, but don't worry it was only because the world-ending monster stuck inside me almost woke up and threw a temper tantrum!' When it rains it pours he guessed, "I got into a fight with a Bount, at least that's what she said they were called."

Yoruichi let out a short grunt and crossed her arms over her chest, "Kisuke was right then… damn it." She shook her head and looked towards the damaged area that was still burning, "We should go." With that, both Naruto and Yoruichi disappeared swiftly to return to the base.

XxX

Goethe had been sealed back into object form as Yoshino ran further away from the site of her fight with Naruto, 'I barely even marked him and he didn't even seem to be trying until the end. All of that power was just… ugh, I would have had to fuse to even hope to have a chance against it.' She thought as she jumped over a fence and kept running away.

The retreat continued until a male voice managed to get her to stop cold in her tracks, "You know he doesn't like it when you run away like this Yoshino… you're very special to him. You're special to all of us."

Stopping in place, Yoshino turned around to face the figure standing directly behind her. A young looking man with blue eyes and short brown hair with a small amount of facial hair on his chin stood there calmly. He wore a white button-up shirt and a green vest and tie with black dress pants and shoes along with a black fedora atop his head. He had a smirk on his face and a devious look in his eyes.

'Damn it. It would have been him wouldn't it?' Yoshino thought to herself as there was no running away now, not with the Bounts' bloodhound nipping at her heels, "What are you doing here Cain?"

"I just told you." Cain said, seemingly taking the whole thing as a game, "He doesn't like it when you run away Yoshino. Now personally, I don't care because it gives me something to do other than hunt for food. I didn't even take any souls tonight just so I could look for you." He said with a rather wide grin, "If you want to run that'd be fine because I think the chase would be fun… and if you want to just want to skip the attempt to escape and just fight that would be even better for me."

"Brat." Yoshino growled out as she actually did ponder summoning Goethe again to try and take Cain down a peg, but she was fully aware of the fact that he was held up on a pedestal of sorts. He had broken himself repeatedly for the last century or so to achieve his power and skill faster than basically any other and said power was the peak of combat skill for a Bount.

There wasn't any doubt that without proper motivation Yoshino would be defeated by Cain cleanly enough for him to simply return her, thus she gave in and merely walked towards him, still glaring at him though as she passed him in order to return 'home' where the others were waiting.

"Aww." Cain said, hands in his pockets as he followed behind her, "I thought you were going to be more fun than that Yoshino. I'm disappointed." The woman merely remained silent as they continued back to their own area of operations. However Cain looked up at the sky where he could see the smoke and debris from Yoshino's fight with Naruto still floating up, 'That power I felt… it's just like back then. I can't wait to show you that my strength is more amazing than yours, you won't ever make me look so weak ever again.'

XxX

(Hours Later – Naruto's Base)

"You knew a Bount?" Urahara asked incredulously as he sat in the dining area of the base along with Yoruichi, Hidan, Gaara, and the Mod Souls, "…Well that makes sense I guess, even if the chances of running into one would be slim at best."

"I didn't know she was a Bount 250 years ago genius…" Naruto muttered, picking at his dinner with his chopsticks. He wasn't in the mood to eat and he had barely lost any chakra to need to eat to replenish any strength, "I didn't even know what a Bount was. I couldn't readily see full ghosts either remember? She never used any special abilities and I didn't even want her as a friend at first." He wanted the explanation to end because in addition to the pressing Bount issue he also had to check with a more personal matter at his first opportunity.

"Wait…" Yoruichi cut in, "I thought you said you hadn't tried actively befriending anyone in 1000 years."

Naruto shrugged in response, "I didn't _try_ to be friends with her. For some reason she tried getting closer to me. I met her in a Prussian village. She was a lonely woman in a small village and most able-bodied men were serving in the standing army at the time… and I guess I was the only person that was really around her age that was there… apparently she was more right than she knew."

_(Flashback – Prussia – 1755)_

_Naruto thought that he really needed to stop getting sage coats tailored for himself… or at least he needed to stop wearing them so much. The fabric and eye-catching nature of the piece of his favored clothing made people think he was rich. Now he _was _rich, but that didn't really matter._

_Even as he walked through the village that he had decided to take residence just outside of in the woods he could hear people commenting on him. He couldn't really fault them, there wasn't much in these small places to do other than to work or gossip so he let it slide. On the other hand it looked like war was about to begin again. The enemies of this country had built their strength back up from past defeats and were ready to attempt another prolonged conflict. Since he had begun his wandering things had gotten harder and harder, keeping the peace from the background seemed impossible… hell, keeping the peace period seemed impossible._

_But he had to try though, which was why he had come to Prussia in the first place._

_As he entered and walked through the forest that kept his self-constructed home concealed, Naruto decided to sit down under a tree so that he could take a break, 'I really wish things were like they were back when I first started wandering… at least then the world was smaller and my name held some damn weight… not like now. I can't even get a private conversation with any kings or anything because I'm a nobody, and I can't get close without getting an audience without being called an assassin.'_

_He had discovered around five hundred years prior that nothing he did to avert war worked. Early attempts at trying to pass on teachings the way the original Rikudou Sennin did only wound up with his teachings being used to propagate even more war, and trying to show his own power and force never ended well at all. All he could do was attempt to shorten conflicts and protect innocents, but even that was getting harder and harder._

'_People fight like crap these days…' Naruto thought as he let his mind wander when he considered how Europeans engaged in open warfare. Of course the way he fought would have had people accuse him of being a savage, but he'd rather be a live savage than a dead gentleman. He didn't even use guns, but then again Rasenshuriken beats gun… it also beat cannon… and warship._

_Hell, Rasenshuriken beat everything these days._

'_Maybe I should just disappear on a mountain somewhere to just get away from all of this?' As Naruto shut his eyes to attempt to meditate for a bit to pass the time he thought of just becoming a hermit, 'Nah, I'd go crazy from boredom. Besides… it would only last for maybe a hundred years before someone found me.' His meditation quickly picked up on the presence of someone nearby, close enough to see what he was doing. In case it was someone wishing to do him harm for some reason he opened his eyes and called them out, "Come out so I can see you. If you're going to watch me I want to see you too."_

_It took a second or so, but from behind a tree nearby a woman walked out. She wore a long light colored dress and shroud on her head, covering her long brown hair. Her face didn't have much life to it so she wasn't there to fight him. It didn't seem she was there for much of anything as her brown eyes looked at him with a dull interest while he stared right back with a placid expression._

_The two just stared at each other for the longest time without saying a word, Naruto trying to decipher what it was the woman was looking for by observing him. He had seen her around the town whenever he came around because he could remember never seeing her around anyone else. Didn't she have any family or friends?_

"_You're like me."_

_Naruto blinked in confusion as he heard the woman finally speak up. Apparently she realized what she had done and blushed, not meaning to say that out loud as she averted her eyes away from his, "What do you mean I'm like you?" Naruto asked, 'I really doubt that you're anything like me…'_

_Getting her nerve back quickly in the face of the strange blonde man whom no one knew his name, the woman voiced her reasoning, "Well whenever you come into town you never speak to anyone… You've been here for over a year and it's rather strange."_

"_So now I'm strange?" Naruto said with a smirk. Maybe if he could get this woman to think she had offended him she would leave him alone? What exactly would occur if he became friends with her? Nothing positive in the long run that was for certain proven in the past._

"_Yes." Well that plan certainly backfired most spectacularly. Offending him apparently wasn't a big concern to her, something else that was different about this woman, "But I think in a good way. You're not like anyone else but you don't seem dangerous, you honestly seem kind of lonely." Naruto raised an eyebrow getting her to explain further, "That's what I meant by saying that you're like me."_

"_But you're beautiful." Naruto blurted out before thinking things through. Seeing the surprise on the woman's face he backtracked a bit with a sheepish grin, "I mean, why would anyone like you be lonely? You seem more than nice enough."_

_A grateful smile came onto the woman's face, "I'm kind of different from other people. Please don't make me tell you why. I don't think you would even believe me if I told you."_

_Chuckling at someone thinking they could show him something that _he_ had never seen before, Naruto decided to respond, "Don't be so sure. I've seen pretty much everything you could see in my lifetime. I don't think you could surprise me with much."_

"_Yes… I assume a mercenary such as yourself has seen quite a bit." The woman said with a patronizing smile before taking a moment to think, "You are a mercenary aren't you? You don't seem to be from around here, you don't even seem to be from this country. In addition to that you dress strangely and you've been seen carrying weapons before… no firearms though… strange."_

"_Close enough I guess…" Naruto said with a deadpan look on his face, "And I don't like rifles or anything like that. It's just the way I am."_

_A nervous look overcame the face of Naruto's new female acquaintance as she made to ask another question, "I rather enjoy walking through the forest in my spare time, but it's clear that you live here. I would hate to trouble you in case my presence here ever caused me to stumble upon your home. You seem to like your privacy mister..."_

"_You can call me Naruto." He didn't know why she was nervous, whether she was afraid of him or otherwise, but he wasn't a jerk enough to tell her that she couldn't walk around on land that he didn't even own. Especially since his house was more or less a hut with barely enough room for him to eat and sleep in, "And sure thing. You can come here whenever you want to. Just be careful wandering around. There are some pretty scary things someone could run into out here." That didn't sound creepy or suspicious at all, did it? From her reaction she didn't seem to care too much,_

"_I'm sure." The woman said, letting out a slight laugh, "By the way my name is-."_

(End Flashback)

"Yoshino…" Naruto said as he brought his thought process to an end, "Her name is Yoshino." He said in a reserved manner as he thought more along the time span where he actually knew the woman, "I was only there for three years though. I guess I left an impression." Naruto said the last thing dryly, but there wasn't really anything humorous about the current situation, "Maybe she liked me too much to try and suck out my soul."

Urahara chimed in again, "Bounts don't really go for taking souls from living humans… at least not until now. I haven't heard of so many cases happening at once before. They usually take the souls of dead humans that are trying to pass on, but this gives the Bounts immortality."

Hidan had enough of the loose descriptions since he had been hearing them all night thus far, "Okay, enough of all of this mystery attacker shit! What the fuck is a Bount, why the fuck do I care, and how the fuck do you kill it? Please let it be with sharp objects and lots of physical violence and blood…" The Mod Souls in attendance all let out a shiver as Hidan grinned following his last statement.

However everyone else had more than adjusted for Hidan's own personal brand of lunacy and thus resulted in being unfazed by his words as Urahara carried on, "Bounts are living beings much like Quincies are only they were artificially created centuries ago in an explosion by a Shinigami scientist. Well out of embarrassment for what happened in creating them by mistake, the fact that they posed a threat to the balance of the worlds because of their consumption of souls, and because the explosion took out a tenth of the Seireitei the Bounts were meant to be destroyed by orer of the Central 46. A few must have survived then."

Gaara's stoic face was clearly not pleased by what he was hearing, "I heard that the Shinigami did the same thing to the Quincy race as well… The more I hear, the less I like about this Central 46. These were more or less genocides… simply because it wasn't convenient to allow the races to keep existing. There is always a way to resolve such issues without exterminating one side or the other, a nonviolent method."

"I agree." Hidan said with a sage-like nod, surprising everyone in the room, "…Except replace the word 'non' with 'extremely', and after the word 'violent' you should include the word 'Blood Explosion Extraordinaire'!" He said before cackling loudly in his normal maniacal manner. Yeah, that was more like it.

"…And we're back." Yoruichi said in a deadpan voice, getting things on track once more, "But yes, a lot of us aren't blind to the tons of imperfections that exist in the Seireitei. Still it's the Spirit King who is in the real control, the only person that the Central 46 answers to, and no one has ever gone to see him and come back. Only members of Squad Zero, and they stay there in the realm of the Spirit King for the rest of their existence."

Hearing about Soul Society politics, especially ones of this nature, was beginning to grate on Naruto's nerves… and made him glad that he was something of an anarchist at this point in time, "Yoshino had this weird fire thing fighting for her that seemed sentient. She called it a doll and it seemed to be the thing that embodied most of her combat powers, so I guess all Bounts have something like that too?" Urahara nodded in reply, "And these Mod Soul guys are going to help us find them?"

"That's right." Urahara said brightly, "Feel free to throw in a bonus for my services once this is all said and done."

"I'll definitely feel free to _not_ do that." Naruto said, getting a disappointed groan out of the blonde scientist before focusing on the task at hand, "This is good though. Maybe now that we can actually readily detect the presence of Bounts we can have some warning when it's time to fight next time and I don't have to get hypnotized."

Hidan found that last bit of information hilarious, "You got caught in a glorified genjutsu? Hah! You're a sucker for illusions? That's just outstanding…"

The jab from Hidan, who wasn't much better with illusions and mostly survived them during his ninja career due to the fact that nothing could kill him in battle and he could just injure himself heavily enough to break any genjutsu, didn't get Naruto to rise and engage in a battle of words much to everyone's surprise.

It couldn't have just been the Bount thing working his nerves Yoruichi figured. Fighting an army of Shinigami in the middle of their stronghold didn't give him much pause, nor did heading feet first into the realm full of Hollows on a whim, and the key to reading Naruto's mindset was through his eyes when it wasn't evident by his words. In that case his eyes were seemingly full of thoughts of a negative nature.

XxX

(Visoreds Hideout – Training Ground)

"**I am so sick of fighting you!"** Ichigo yelled at Hiyori with his Hollow mask on his face as they clashed blades, **"Back off you pygmy! Or at least let somebody else fight me for once, I'm getting bored here!"**

The small pigtailed warrior took offense to the fact that she was apparently boring Ichigo, even if he had a point since he had acclimated very well to taking the full measure of her attack… as much as she was allowed to utilize anyway against an ally which was still quite a massive amount of power, **"Well I'm the only one that feels like fighting your lame ass to get you to manifest your mask better so shut up or get cut!"**

As they continued to fight and the others remained as they were, just hanging out around the training area doing next to nothing, Naruto literally dropped in through the entrance at the top without a sound as his feet hit the ground. He walked forward until he ran into the barrier with his face and pressed it against it, "Yo… someone drop this thing so I can get in."

"Fishcake!" Mashiro said happily as she walked over to him from the inside of the barrier, "You got in! But how did you get through the barrier outside? Hachi put up one out there and three down here."

"Well I broke the one outside for kicks… and because I thought it might piss a few of you off. And I'm guessing that I just walked into the three others since I can't go forward anymore." He said, getting a nod from the green haired ditzy woman in return, "Cool, now could Hachi drop these three? I've got some business."

A nod came from the rather large man as he did what was requested of him. The appearance of Naruto and the lowering of the barriers gained the attention of the rest of the Visoreds and the combating Ichigo and Hiyori, the latter of whom was rather perturbed at the interruption, "Huh? What do you want here dumbass? Do you want a beatdown too?"

"You haven't given me a beatdown in days!" Ichigo yelled heatedly, throwing his mask to the ground, getting upset at her belittling of his strides with his abilities. Ignoring both of them, Naruto marched right up to Ichigo and stared him down closely enough to unnerve Ichigo at the proximity, "Uh, can I help you?"

Naruto continued to appraise Ichigo without saying a word before putting a glowing black hand on Ichigo's forehead. Another moment passed before Naruto gave a thumbs-up to Hiyori, "Yeah, this is great. Wonder-boy is ready to rock and roll. Good work you guys."

Shinji stepped forward, "You can't just yank him out of here Naruto. We weren't done with him yet. Hiyori hasn't gotten a chance to vent on anyone like this in decades-. I mean his training isn't done yet. He can only keep his mask on for over a minute. That was his limit." Truthfully only more fighting and hands-on experience at this point would tack on any more time to Ichigo's mask time until it became instinct for him to keep it on… but Hiyori hadn't had a good punching bag since they first wound up in the world of the living and Ichigo was like Teflon; no matter what, the effects of a beating just never stuck to him.

A deadpan look came at the de facto leader of the fallen Shinigami from Naruto before he looked back at Ichigo with the exact same expression, "Wonder-boy."

"Yep?" Ichigo responded quickly with a blank look on his face, used to Naruto's nickname for him by now.

"Feeling good?"

"You know it."

"No more Hollow take-overs?"

"Nope."

"Let's roll then."

"Awesome."

And with that, Naruto and Ichigo simply strode on out of the warehouse with apparently no strings attached. The others were stunned at how Naruto just walked in and walked out with Ichigo in tow like they were glorified babysitters. Did Ichigo even work for Naruto?

Wait…

"Does Naruto pay for this kind of stuff?" Kensei asked, vaguely remembering Naruto talking about some kind of job opportunity in the past, "…Because we need money."

"To hell with money!" Hiyori yelled, seething at what had just happened, "That dandelion-headed bastard just took my punching bag! I'm going to kick his ass the next time he shows his face in here!"

At that point Naruto's head popped back into the room upside down from the real warehouse section above ground back into the training room, "I'll give him back on one condition. You guys help me with this stuff that's going on right now. Then you can keep trying to kick the crap out of Ichigo."

"Is it Aizen?" Lisa asked, curious as to what would be the reason.

"No. But I'm just thinking a full court press could nip some trouble in the bud right now." Naruto answered honestly, "Come on… you could have him back until I need him again for just one mission for me. All of you don't even need to leave to help."

A unanimous answer went up from the entirety of the group, "Not interested."

Before Naruto could open his mouth to try and barter out another service deal from the very difficult to deal with Visoreds, Ichigo grabbed him by the roof of the mouth and pulled him back up through the opening, "Would you quit trying to pimp me out for favors when you're not even paying me? You're almost as bad as Urahara! And who are we supposed to be fighting again?"

XxX

(Bount Mansion)

"So you're saying that's what you felt aren't you?" A tall, powerful looking man with white hair, red eyes, and long eyebrows asked as he sat down in an ornate looking chair. He had a vertical scar on his chin and wore a brown and dark blue trench coat over suit-like clothing, "Our old friend Uzumaki Naruto." At his side was a man with short black hair wearing a sleeveless Shinigami uniform, taking up the position of a bodyguard of sorts.

Cain nodded with a smirk on his face as he took his fedora off, "Just as strong as ever… but I've got a question for you Kariya. If you knew who he was even all those years ago then why didn't you try to kill him to get him out of the way?"

The white-haired man Kariya's face exuded calm confidence and a distinct lack of offense at the question, "When I first learned of him he was a means to an end to secure something I wanted and we needed. I didn't expect him to survive but he did because I was unaware of his powers at the time, and I never imagined that his lifespan was just as long as ours. I simply didn't see him as a threat." He then noticed Cain's eyes narrow at the prospect of Naruto not being a threat, "You still despise him don't you?"

Cain didn't answer, he simply turned to leave the room, 'Back then I was too weak to manage my own power, it was great enough to destroy me. But _he_ handled it as if it were nothing. _My own power_ that even I didn't have control over. Well it's time to see how my strength truly compares to his now that me and my doll are in synch.'

XxX

(The Next Day – Naruto's Base)

With pretty much the entire group of combat ready Karakura High School students assembled at long last now that Ichigo had been finally sprung from his never-ending sparring match against Hiyori, briefing was finally able to be fully given on the current situation. After hearing about the Bounts and how they were going around attacking people Ichigo was itching to test out his new power on an opponent thus the entire situation with the Bounts couldn't have occurred at a more opportunistic time for him. The only ones actually feeling left out were Uryuu due to his lack of powers and Tatsuki… because Naruto still had her training.

"How much power does it take to pop this damn rubber ball? I'm pumping out all of the chakra I can!" Tatsuki growled as she was visibly straining her chakra into the small rubber ball in her right hand. Naruto had better be glad he was on the roof, not to be disturbed without a reason or else he would have been getting an earful from his hotheaded student.

As she did this and decided to keep an ear in on the meeting Urahara held up three pieces of round candy, "These are the Mod Souls that are able to detect Bounts. You should put them in something a little less conspicuous so that you can keep them close at all times, even at school just in case." He handed one to Ichigo seeing as he believed out of the lot of the younger ones he would be the quickest one to find a fight if it was to occur, "Here you go. This one is Ririn." Another one was handed to Chad, "You get Noba." And the last one was given to Orihime, "You've got Kuroudo."

Ichigo was quick to realize that it was just like the candy that housed Kon's soul, so that was easy enough to find a body for. All he needed was another doll or a stuffed animal or something, "What about everyone else? Why don't they get one?"

Urahara grinned before answering Ichigo's question, "Because Naruto can actually sense them like the Mod Souls and find their location if he's in his Sage Mode so he's basically his own Bount detector, Yoruichi is meant to sit here on the base to wait for something, Gaara will be with you all anyway during school or with Naruto here so he doesn't need one, because even if Hidan gets sneak-attacked… well we don't care because it's not like he can die in his Gigai even if they get him with a good attack, and because Uryuu doesn't have powers so if he fought a Bount he'd just be delivering himself on a silver-platter to them… literally… because they would probably just eat his soul."

Attention was not paid to the raincloud forming over the silent Uryuu's head at Urahara's blunt statement that he was more or less useless.

Chad held up the small piece of candy that held Noba's spirit, "Got it." He said plainly as he headed out to find a plush toy or something to use for Noba's container.

The next to leave was Orihime to do the same, "Right! If anything strange happens I'll call as quickly as I can!"

This left Ichigo and Uryuu alone with Urahara and Tatsuki. Ichigo blinked and looked at the little ball of candy that had been given to him before shrugging, "Alright, I'm heading out too I guess. Uryuu? Tatsuki? Either of you guys want to come with me?" Honestly Ichigo was just glad to be out of that damned warehouse after so long being stuck in there. He was absolutely loving life at the moment and the offer to go do anything at all with Uryuu was evidence enough of that.

"I would rather not Kurosaki." Uryuu replied coolly. It wasn't that he didn't want to go searching for Bounts, it was just that Urahara was right. In the instance he found a Bount, then what would he do? Ichigo was better off on his own as much as he hated to admit it. He would be an albatross if he were to tag along, 'Damn that Shinigami Kurotsuchi Mayuri. I lost my powers trying to kill him and he didn't even have the courtesy to die.'

Looking over to Tatsuki at that point, Ichigo didn't get a much better answer from her as she proceeded to address him in cavewoman form, "…Need to pop stupid-ass rubber ball and learn cool jutsu that grinds through stuff. Go find and kill Bounts." Tatsuki managed to grit out through her focus.

'Wow…' Ichigo thought with a sweatdrop, 'I didn't really expect the cold shoulder from both of them. Ishida maybe, but from Tatsuki too? She must really want to learn that attack.' Ichigo scratched the back of his head before shoving his hands into his pockets and walking off, "Alright, fine. I'll see you guys later then."

XxX

On the roof of the base, Gaara and Hidan took note of Ichigo, Orihime, and Chad walking off on their own separate ways. In the case of the next Bount sighting they would be ready to move out, but for now they had another issue that they were being briefed on.

"You think the Juubi is stirring?" Gaara said in his normal calm sounding tone, but if one knew him well enough they could hear the shock in the redhead's voice, "That is… very discomforting."

"For you maybe." Hidan said nonchalantly, "The Juubi can be as scary as it wants to be, it can't kill me motherfuckers. Or did you both forget that part?"

"True." Gaara admitted freely, "But it could devour you and you could suffer for an eternity in its bowels, being digested until the end of time or until your Gigai actually does die from a lack of nourishment. That would also drain all of your Reiatsu which means that your soul would die as well and your soul would be recycled. Thus when you were reincarnated you would not have your curse powers or any sort of memory at all… if mankind would even exist by the time you were reincarnated."

That little revelation gave Hidan pause, because he had not thought that far ahead. Damn Gaara and his Kazekage-smart train of thought to burst his immortality bubble, "…I didn't think of that as a possibility. Damn, that would be like getting stuck in the lazy-ass kid's forest buried alive only worse… or purgatory." The silver-haired sadist turned towards Naruto who hadn't spoken a word since he and Gaara had been given the news straight from the horse's mouth about what was happening, "So how long do we have?"

Naruto's eyes remained closed as he attempted to keep up his meditation in addition to speaking to his friends, "Honestly, I have no idea. It could just be a flare up and I still have hundreds of years left, but do you really think we're that lucky?"

"When it rains for us it pours… ever since the day we were born." Gaara said, speaking from experience for both himself and Naruto, simultaneously answering Naruto's rhetorical question at the same time, "So this has never happened before?"

"Not this soon after I had already beaten him." Naruto said a frown on his face as he continued to meditate, "Once every thousand years, give or take a few centuries. I've fought him three times, and that's two times too many as far as I'm concerned. The first time happened in Italy a few hundred years after the war ended and I didn't know what the little spurts of anger and difficulty suppressing my chakra meant… so I got totally blindsided when Sasuke decided to wake up the first time… and he was pissed."

"No shit." Hidan chimed in unceremoniously.

Unfettered by the interruption, Naruto continued where Hidan had stopped him from, "We tore the entire landscape apart for four days straight. Earthquakes, nasty lightning storms… the works. Nobody in the area besides me walked away by the time it was all over, and people that explored the place afterwards said that a volcano, Vesuvius, did it. The volcano didn't do it, we did it. _I_ did it."

Despite her lack of inclusion in the council of the former shinobi, Yoruichi was hidden nearby in her cat transformation to help subdue her energy output in order to lessen the chance of her presence being discovered by her comrades during their private conversation. Needless to say, she was hearing the whole thing.

'Volcano…' Yoruichi thought before the event linked up with the place and the cause, 'Oh no Naruto…' Shinigami were well aware of the events of Mt. Vesuvius due to the massive influx of thousands of souls following the disaster that had gone largely unexplained. The absurd amount of traffic that the Soul Society received immediately afterwards kept them from ever trying to search for why it had occurred in the first place. By the time things had calmed down there was no sign of the cause of the tens of thousands of deaths, 'Don't tell me that was you.'

"What about the second time it occurred?" Gaara inquired curiously, "You said you fought him three times."

'He told me he only fought the monster in him twice.' Yoruichi thought to herself, 'Why did he lie?'

"The second time was a thousand years later and I knew it was coming from the feeling I was having so I was able to get to the Sahara Desert where there was less of a chance of someone getting hurt." A wry smile came upon Naruto's face at that point that held little humor, "It was a very good idea… because that time my mind was clear enough to actually fight him. It was so easy that time that I don't even consider that one of the times we've fought. It only took a day to put that bastard back to sleep that time. Juubi or not it had Sasuke's mindset and he was overconfident from the first fight because he almost won. He didn't fight with any urgency. Sucker."

Hidan gave Naruto a thumbs down and a raspberry, "No random innocent bystanders dead? Thumbs down Uzumaki-brat. Jashin-sama would not have approved." He let out a sigh and shook his head, "Just like movies I guess… the sequel is never as good as the original."

Naruto's eyes opened, revealing that he was in Sage Mode and was able to keep gathering nature chakra even while conversing, "I think a few people died… but only around a dozen or so because they ventured close enough to try and get a look. The third time I ran up to the Arctic Circle around the 1800s… and we tore it all up. That was the worst one because he was pissed, he was aware, and he fought like he had nothing to lose because he didn't. I still don't know how I won that one. I was hurt so bad after it was over that I couldn't get back to civilization. I had to make an emergency hideout to stash all of my equipment that I brought for the fight just so that I had somewhere sort of safe to heal."

Something caught Gaara's attention though, "Naruto you have the Rinnegan correct?" Naruto gave an affirmative grunt, "So if you have the powers of the Rikudou Sennin why do you not just reseal the Juubi in the moon, or something like the moon since you have the same jutsu that created it in your repertoire?"

A deadpan stare came from Naruto, "You don't think that I didn't think of that in over 2000 years of being stuck with the bastard in my gut? All that would do would seal Sasuke's Juubi body away, and then I'd just end up making the nine biju all over again, free to roam I might add, with no one else able to seal them away because I'd be dead. So instead of one ultimate monster of destruction that can't die there would be nine weaker versions… that can't die. Versions that no one else in the world of the living would be able to deal with since no one knows anything of how to make jinchuuriki to contain them."

Hidan let out a scoff at Naruto, "You're just afraid to die aren't you?" Gaara turned to Hidan, seemingly taking more offense at the slight than Naruto did as the blonde expressed no interest in what Hidan was saying.

"Take that back Hidan." Gaara warned him, the cork on the top of his gourd popping off as sand drifted out. To hear anyone doubt his best friend's sense of valor deeply irked him. He seemed prepared to fight when he realized that Naruto hadn't risen to the insult, "Naruto?"

Naruto simply let his Rinnegan come into view as he made eye contact with Hidan, "If you think I'm afraid to die then you're as dumb as I look. Say I do it. Say that I pull it off and create the nine biju all over again. Then what? Yeah it'll kill me, but that's not the point. The point is, who's going to clean up the mess afterwards? There is no next generation to solve the problem. No one in the world of the living can do it, and neither can anyone in the Seireitei if they even felt like stepping in. I wouldn't be surprised if they somehow found a way to make the biju into their own weapon if I was vindictive enough to release them in the Soul Society."

Hidan realized that he had subtly struck a nerve, and didn't feel like getting sealed away again. Naruto would be meaner about it and more thorough than Shikamaru was because he wasn't as lazy, he would make a moon and chuck him away into space never to be seen again if he were really upset, "Okay… well what about Hueco Mundo. We can do it right now, let's roll." A large hand of sand then slapped Hidan across the back of the head, "Oi!"

"Not an option either." Gaara said, calling his sand back and crossing his arms over his chest, "It was said that when a jinchuuriki died and the seal holding the demon back was strong enough to ensure such the demon would die as well… only they would reform after a period of time and rampage on Earth again. So where did they reform? That means that the biju can hop planes of existence to and from Hueco Mundo."

"What about the Soul Society?" Hidan queried. Hey, he was technically a Hollow and he was technically evil, so what did he care if the biju were all unleashed in the Soul Society? Dump that crap in the hands of the Shinigami for all he cared. Apparently he had also forgotten Naruto's earlier point about the biju being made into weapons by the Seireitei if they could keep the demons from outright destroying the entire population of normal souls wherever they roamed.

Gaara was quick with a theory, "Since the Soul Society apparently never had any reports of biju activity among them I would assume that there are safeguards in place to prevent simple plane-hopping to the Soul Society and they never manifested there either… either that or the biju are intelligent enough to stay away from there. Needless to say, if he released them in Hueco Mundo then they could hop to the world of the living anyway. Maybe the original Rikudou Sennin was aware of the other realms and attempted to do the same thing, only he died after doing so the way Naruto would if he tried it. He probably died thinking that he had solved the Juubi problem, not knowing that he had only complicated the matter. Remember, despite what was said about him he was just a man, not a God."

Hidan stroked his chin in thought, "What about hell? Nothing can get out of hell from what Yoruichi says."

"I don't know how to get to hell without dying first and being unrepentantly evil in the process." Naruto said with a grunt, "Now I don't think I'd have much of a problem with that, being stuck there myself for all eternity if I could keep Juubi-Sasuke there, but here's the thing; if I die then guess what? Sasuke immediately comes out in full-on Juubi mode, free to roam the planet, more pissed than ever, and ready to rampage with nobody to stop him."

"Well you could-." Hidan started, prepared to say something else before he stopped and stroked his chin in a pondering manner. After a minute or two of failed thinking he finally growled and shouted, "Damn it! That's a fucking whammy!"

"That's quite a whammy." Gaara said in agreement.

"I've got nothing." Hidan said, wiping his hands of the whole situation, "I quit. Good luck with holding back the end of all existence with your spongy little flesh body Uzumaki."

Naruto held up a single hand that tilted back and forth as he gave a deadpan expression, "That's why I'm the keeper of the balance. Did you think I just thought that title up to be cute?" Silence reigned over the rooftop, "Okay I did, but there was a reason for it… it wasn't just me being bored and coming up with six million nicknames for myself."

"So if you ever flat out die in battle or if during one of your little challenges you lose to the Juubi-… err Sasuke, or whatever the Uchiha runt's name was then we're all screwed?" Hidan asked with a raised eyebrow, "If he's that strong then how can you keep beating him?"

"Because he lives in my gut and I'm used to his chakra and can use massive amounts of it while we fight to drain him, because he's Sasuke so I know his nature, because the strength of my will keeps him from releasing all of his power from the get-go, because he's sluggish and sleepy as hell every time he wakes up. I mean for Kami's sake he sleeps for most of the millennium before he decides to wake up each time." Naruto stated, listing each reason why on his fingers, "Oh, and because I'm the baddest man that has ever lived. That's the most important part, dattebayo."

Yoruichi had to mentally laugh at such a self-inflated sense of opinion, but considering everything that had preceded it to this point she couldn't say that it was entirely unfounded in its reasoning. She wanted to confront him and talk to him about his situation. There had to be a reason he didn't want to tell her or Urahara or anyone else about it and she wanted to trust him, but she just wanted to know.

Still, it might have been because there were more pressing issues at hand. Anyway she figured that she would trust in him. She had not been given a reason to mistrust him, but between the Bount woman Yoshino, the eternal life destined to be spent in perpetual combat with the creature of his culture's apocalypse, and the catastrophic battles for the sake of the mortal plane waged over the timeline with said creature who knew what else there was to this man?

'You are without a doubt the most interesting human that I have ever met Naruto.' Yoruichi thought as she walked back down the stairs to the inside of the building in her cat transformation form, 'I don't even think you could be called a human at this point…'

XxX

(With Uryuu)

Sundown was the time of day in Karakura Town as Uryuu strode through town on his way home. It was killing him inside that he couldn't assist the others. Having spiritual awareness without the ability to actually do anything with what he could perceive around him was a hindrance. He could really understand how Tatsuki felt prior to her current training. She had been a girl that had spent her life learning to face her problems head on and found that when it really came down to it she had been unable to handle anything the way she figured she had been able to. She was for all intents and purposes powerless no matter how much she attempted to remedy this.

Until a loophole was created and she discovered a way to actually learn to deal with Hollows. Unfortunately that was not an option for Uryuu. He had locked away his ability to deal with Hollows and these Bounts that were apparently running amok.

He felt around in his pocket for his phone, ready to try and make a call. He needed to find a way to solve this problem and at the moment there were only two people he would possibly bring something like this to, one of whom was out of the question due to them technically being a Shinigami.

And by now it was abundantly clear that unlike Urahara, Naruto wasn't a Shinigami and had unorthodox ways to solve problems and tackle situations. Some of them were stupid approaches, but they worked… and if something was stupid but it worked then it wasn't stupid.

At this point Uryuu would do nearly any stupid act necessary to regain his Quincy powers. Plus he had nothing to lose by calling and asking. This was his state of mind as he hit the speed-dial number and placed the phone to his ear, waiting on someone to pick up.

Thinking so hard about his own lack of powers, Uryuu failed to notice that behind him the cracks in the sidewalk he had been walking on began to form strange looking snakes that slithered along the ground behind him.

* * *

**Chapter complete. I'm in a disheveled state of mind at the moment so I can only hope you enjoyed the chapter more than I'm currently enjoying being conscious and aware of the world around me.**

**Now if you'll excuse me I've got to attempt to proactively go solve a very important problem of a bureaucratical nature.**

**Later people, Kenchi out.**


	21. Time Will Prove Everything

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. For the second time in less than six months I am typing this story sans the full mobile usage of one hand. Maybe I should stop punching things for fun/to try and make a living?

Nah, it's too much fun. Besides, what else could I possibly be good at as a 20 year old university student? Who the fuck would hire me for an actual income providing job at this point, even if I do have something of a minor resume?

Shoot for the stars though kids!

**Chapter 21: Time Will Prove Everything**

* * *

Naruto, Gaara, and Hidan sat in a circle inside of the cafeteria of the recently dubbed 'Mother Base'. Each had a look of intense thought on their faces… except for Gaara because Gaara's face never really changed without good reasoning for it.

This was the scene Yoruichi, back in her human form and fully clothed to boot, walked in on when she went to inform Naruto of something, "Hey Naruto the-." She stopped when she saw the three of them as still as statues and just as silent. It was rare enough seeing Naruto sit still when he wasn't meditating, but to hear not a word coming from Hidan's mouth? Outrageous, "What are you guys doing?"

"Brainstorming." Hidan said gruffly, "I don't see why you need me here for this. It isn't really my thing."

"You're right." Gaara said admittedly in his dull voice, "But Tatsuki doesn't know enough about the situation to add anything and Yoruichi-san was not here. She is now, so that means you can go away."

At being so readily dismissed as if he were useless, Hidan gave Gaara a deadpan look before taking the pike from around his neck and extending it to attack Gaara. Gaara's sand readily sprang to his defense and stopped said pike from even getting within a foot of him. Hidan pulled back his arm and retracted the weapon, smacking his lips and nodding, "That's what I thought would happen." He said before leaving the room, pointing at Gaara and making sure there was eye contact, "One of these days sand rat. I'll get past that stupid sand on the first try and then you'll be sorry for talking all that shit."

"I'm so scared." Gaara said sarcastically though no one would be able to tell one way or the other, looking back at Hidan impassively without blinking, "Can't you see how scared I am?" He pointed at his never changing expression, "See? I look absolutely terrified right now."

Yoruichi grinned as she took the seat that had been left by Hidan, "We can all see that Gaara. Now what are you all thinking so hard about?" She hoped that they were referring to Naruto's little situation that they had been talking about on the roof amongst themselves. It was a pretty big secret and there were reasons that he didn't tell her or anyone else other than those from his past, but still she hoped she would be trusted with it.

"Uryuu's powers… or lack of powers." Naruto said with a shrug.

Yoruichi blinked, slightly disappointed but otherwise alright with the conversation, "So what about them? He, for lack of better term, blew his wad against Kurotsuchi Mayuri when we were invading the Sereitei. Therefore his body sealed off his access to his spiritual energy. Simple as that."

"But he still has it though?" Gaara asked, raising a nonexistent eyebrow curiously.

"Yes." Yoruichi said, "Everything alive has and needs Reiryoku. His body is still stuck with the full reserves that he had before activating his Quincy technique, he just can't use it. It's like the parts of his makeup that would release the energy are overworked due to whatever technique he used to win and they closed up to stop his body from destroying itself."

"So… it's like an injury." Naruto ventured as a guess, "Like his points for releasing energy scabbed over so he'd stop bleeding out so much power."

A dry look came onto Yoruichi's face, "You could have said it in a less disgusting manner that I can actually see in my head right now, but overall yes. It was done to 'stop the bleeding' as you so said. Quincy powers are very unique."

Silence then reigned over the room to such an extent that Yoruichi almost got fed up with the two thinking like their brains were encased in cement. She almost got up to leave and get back to the reason she had come looking for Naruto in the first place when Naruto spoke up again, "So if it's like an injury then why can't we just heal it?"

"With what?" Yoruichi asked in an exasperated manner, sprawling herself out in her chair for added effect.

"With Orihime." Naruto said plainly, "She can heal everything else up to and including the time last week when Tatsuki birfucated Hidan and we couldn't find his lower half. It just showed right back up, like he never got cut clean in half." He wished medical ninjutsu was that good when he was a ninja. He would have been w_ay_ more reckless if it had been… even more reckless than he already had been anyway.

"She can't do that." Yoruichi said unsure of exactly what limitations Orihime's powers had, "Can she?"

Gaara spoke up at this point, "You weren't here for that, were you Yoruichi-san? She did indeed heal Hidan without even the bottom half of his body at the ready. He jumped right back up and proceeded to do the same to Tatsuki… we were able to keep him from killing her though and Inoue-san proceeded to heal her as well." Hidan was in rare vengeful form on that day. It actually would have been impressive if it hadn't been so overtly violent.

"We found the bottom half of Hidan later." Naruto informed her with a shrug, "Me and Gaara were sparring while he wasn't in his Gigai, and I found it when Gaara chucked me into the lake. So I threw it at Gaara when I got out." A grin came over his face, "It surprised him enough that I hit a pretty nasty combo on him too."

"You cheated." Gaara said, seemingly stewing at the memory.

"No such thing." Both Naruto and Yoruichi chimed simultaneously before Yoruichi chose to get back on topic, "But you think Orihime can heal Uryuu's powers? I find it hard to believe, it's not based on anything."

Gaara crossed his arms over his chest, "Inoue-san's healing technique doesn't knit muscle or fuse bone back together. It doesn't use her Reiryoku as a medium to speed up natural healing. Nor does it make a substitute for what is lost or injured. It simply…" He found himself at a loss for words and merely shrugged his shoulders, "It simply restores a subject to its former state. As if… negating the damage."

Yoruichi had a huge grin on her face as she leaned back in her chair, "You wanted to give up and just say 'reject' to describe her powers so bad didn't you?" She reached for Gaara and gave him a few hearty pats on the shoulder, "No need to try and be so articulate Gaara, you've got nothing to prove to us!"

"Nevertheless…" Gaara said, trying to keep his aloof individuality, "I believe that it would be worth a try to see if Inoue-san's powers can heal Ishida-san. What is there to lose? And how did neither of you come to this conclusion prior to now?"

Naruto sighed and ran a hand through his hair, "Give me a break Gaara. I don't look at her powers because she never used them on me. The only two times I got my ass kicked bad enough to need someone to heal me Orihime wasn't around. Maybe if I had the Rinnegan on I would have seen something easier when she worked with others, but I'm not much for the healing if you haven't noticed by now."

Yoruichi folded her hands neatly underneath her chin, "So are you going to call Orihime and Uryuu and tell them what the plan of action is?"

"I think we should tell them tomorrow." Naruto said, wrinkling his nose in thought, "We could call them tonight, but nothing's going to get done until tomorrow anyway. I don't want to get Uryuu's hopes up or seem like we're putting this all on Orihime's head just in case it doesn't work." He hadn't had powers since the summer ended, he could go one more night without them in case there was a chance they could be brought back.

All three of them nodded in agreement before Yoruichi remembered what she had come into the cafeteria in the first place for, "Oh, our Shinigami arrivals are here."

A pronounced frown quickly sprang to Naruto's face, "Great… tell them to stay out of my business and everything'll be cool."

"They're not going to get involved dum-dum." Yoruichi said with a roll of her golden eyes, "They're here to observe how we operate, consider it a show of faith from both sides. They won't do anything without being forced to, and we just go about our day-to-day… and besides, I think Yamamoto-soutaicho was mostly curious about your 'employees' that you neglected to identify."

"So no Resurrección training until the Shinigami leave?" Gaara asked curiously. He didn't really need to train his own, he had become more than accustomed to his own abilities before his long slumber, but Hidan did to get accustomed to the benefits it brought him despite the fact that it was instinctual for Hollows and by extension Arrancar.

Naruto shook his head, "No, tell Hidan if he wants to practice it he can run off to Hueco Mundo and have Hollows just jump him like idiots. He'd be tipping Aizen off though, so he can go to Urahara's where there's less of a chance of anyone feeling anything. If he does that crap here before we get our legs underneath us there's not much we can do to hold back that shitstorm that we don't need any of right now."

Yoruichi stood up and moved behind Naruto's chair smoothly, "You want to meet 'em?"

"Not really."

"Too bad."

With that, Yoruichi grabbed the reluctant Naruto by his shoulders and hoisted him up to his feet as she guided him out of the room, "Come on, you're such a sociable guy. You don't want to meet anymore new people?" She asked as she led him down the hall towards the training room where the portal had opened to bring the Shinigami into the world of the living.

XxX

(Mother Base – Training Ground)

Tatsuki did her best to ignore the Gigai-clad Shinigami that seemed to be standing in front of her. They had momentarily startled her when they entered through their weird portal thing, but she had been told beforehand by Yoruichi that the Shinigami were coming there in such a manner. Thus she got back to work on her attempt to destroy the rubber ball that had quickly become the bane of her existence.

It didn't help though that the Shinigami were standing well within arm's reach of her just staring at her as if she were a free show.

"Well Rukia?" One of the Shinigami said. A female with wavy blonde hair, and very large breasts said in a somewhat interested manner. She had on a yellow short skirt, white knee-high boots, and a billowy white blouse that left little to the imagination when it came to her cleavage, "You've hung around humans more recently than I have so what in the world is she doing with that ball?"

Ah, Rukia, the girl that used to go to school with the rest of them. Tatsuki thought that the small dark-haired girl in the blue sundress looked familiar but she was too busy to worry about something like that at the moment.

"I'm not quite sure." Rukia said, leaning forward towards Tatsuki to study her practice more closely, breaching the human girl's personal space, "But I don't know what she's doing here anyway. She isn't one of the humans that can fight against Hollows and other things."

"So she's not with the Ryoka or this Equilibrium group?"

"No, I don't think so. She can't even see us right now."

A tick mark appeared on Tatsuki's head and she couldn't tune it out any longer, "I _can_ see you, I _can_ fight Hollows, and I _am_ a member of Equilibrium!" Tatsuki snapped, getting Rukia to recoil back in shock at her outburst. Her grip on the rubber ball was pretty tight but after letting out her ever-building frustrations she was able to get back to focusing on popping the rubber ball.

The blonde lady blinked at the sudden attitude from Tatsuki, "For a human that can see us you don't seem to be very surprised or full of questions." Tatsuki just let out an unintelligible grunt getting the Shinigami female to pout at her, "You don't have to make caveman sounds. Just go back to playing with your little ball."

Tatsuki grit her teeth and at that Rukia could sense her power rising, 'She really does have power, but it doesn't feel like pure Reiryoku. It feels familiar though.' As she thought and the feeling of Tatsuki's energy continued to rise, the ball in her hand exploded, knocking her back and blowing dust and debris all about, "What just happened?"

Tatsuki sat on the ground, her hand singed from the intense chakra she used to pop the ball. As she looked at her now empty right hand a grin spread across her face, "Yes!"

"You've got to be kidding me. That's what that bursting noise was?"

The victorious girl turned towards the entrance to the room and grinned even wider when she saw Naruto and Yoruichi making their way within, "Naruto-sensei, I popped the rubber ball so suck on that! Any other stupid exercises you want to throw at me?" Tatsuki said tauntingly.

Naruto just stared at her long and hard with a look on his face that didn't distinguish how he was feeling at the moment, "Well since you asked, I _want_ to chuck you down a ravine old-school style like I was taught. You think you're advanced enough for that, or should I just introduce you to the last step?"

Tatsuki paled and shook her head frantically. Still, Naruto was beside himself. It had been a week since he started teaching her Rasengan and she was already on the third step. It took him a month. What kind of developmental curve did Tatsuki have? It was ridiculous, "Last step please." She said trying to get some of her bluster back. There was no need to lose her edge after a breakthrough in her training.

Naruto fished another balloon from his pocket and blew it up before handing it to her, "Now you need to combine the two steps, rotation and power, into a stable shape. The balloon is to help you visualize the shell of the Rasengan." He blew up another balloon and held it up before holding up a Rasengan in his other hand, "It should look like this and it'll be able to fit in the balloon so no popping it, you need the balloon intact. One day you might get good enough to hold two at one time as well, but for now you'll only be able to make one."

Getting to the last step of her first major jutsu put a predatory look in Tatsuki's eyes as she immediately went to work on her new balloon, popping it rather quickly due to the volatility of her chakra, "Damn it… can you show me the finished Rasengan one more time?" She asked, trying to make one herself to see what it looked like.

"In a bit Tatsuki." Yoruichi said as she proceeded to drag Naruto by his wrist over to Rukia and the other Shinigami, "You didn't really get to meet her even though I asked you to help us save her did you?" She said to Naruto as she and he stopped in front of the visitors, "Rukia this is Uzumaki Naruto. Naruto, this is Kuchiki Rukia."

Naruto stood in front of the petite Shinigami girl and blinked before grinning at the introduction and waving, "Hey. You don't know me since you didn't get to meet me with all of the stuff that happened back in the Seireitei, but like Yoruichi-chan said my name's Naruto and I run this place." He said smugly before getting his cheek pulled on by Yoruichi for his lack of humility.

Rukia, upon hearing that Naruto helped Ichigo break her out of her imprisonment and intended execution, gave a quick bow to him, "It's nice to meet you Uzumaki-san. The person I have with me is the 10th Division Lieutenant Matsumoto Rangiku." She looked around the training room curiously after that though, "Um, we have the 9th Division Lieutenant Hisagi Shuuhei with us as well. He should be somewhere around here too." She was rather embarrassed that they were sidetracked by watching Tatsuki train and managed to lose track of their third member.

"Hello!" The recently identified Rangiku said, waving happily at Naruto, "It's a nice place you've got here. Kind of dry though isn't it?"

Naruto looked at Rangiku with a smile, trying very hard to keep his eyes from straying below her neckline to get a view of her prominent bust. It wouldn't do to make a bad first impression, "We've got a lake, and we're trying to get grass and trees and stuff put in. It'll take a bit for that though." He then noticed Rangiku giving him a pouty look, "What? What's the matter?"

"You're either a prude, or you have the self-control of a saint." Rangiku said, placing her hands on her hips, "I didn't even see your eyes dart down an inch." She then gasped and pounded her hand with a fist as if she had thought of something, "Oh wait, you might be gay, that's a possibility."

Naruto just gave her a dry stare as his eyebrow twitched, "So you're saying that because I'm not looking at your boobs?" A nod from the buxom woman was the answer. He most certainly was not gay. And what was Yoruichi trying so hard to keep from laughing at out loud? She should have known that better than anyone, "Fine. We can solve that problem right now." He said with a shrug as his eyes dropped to Rangiku's chest as if he had been holding up weights while trying to keep them on her face and nothing else.

For some reason that seemed to satiate Rangiku who smiled and nodded as if all were right with the world, "There, that's better. Isn't that nice?"

Rukia palmed her face at Rangiku's behavior and Naruto's willingness to play into it. And this woman was supposed to be her superior. At least there was another lieutenant there that was more reliable… well if they could find him. He wasn't exactly making his presence known. Standing up close, Naruto's presence was very cumbersome. It was hard for her to search around for anyone else by sensing due to his Reiatsu.

"So this guy is the boss huh? Hard to believe that Shihouin Yoruichi or Urahara Kisuke wouldn't be the ones in charge."

They all turned their heads to see a tall man with spiky black hair, three vertical scars on his right eye, a grey horizontal stripe tattoo under his left eye and underneath that a tattoo of the number 69. He had a choker around his neck and armbands around his biceps and a sleeveless black shirt and jeans.

Rukia took it upon herself once again to introduce the man, "Ah, and this is the 9th Division lieutenant I was talking about before. Hisagi Shuuhei."

Shuuhei raised a hand in an easygoing wave, "Yo. I never thought I'd meet a legend like Shihouin Yoruichi in person and someone strong enough to fight Yamamoto-sotaichou's Shikai and get away unscathed, let alone at the same time."

As Shuuhei got closer Naruto extended his hand for the Shinigami to shake which he did without hesitation, "Well I guess now I'll show you where you'll be staying." He looked over at Tatsuki who had been blowing up a new balloon to continue working and stopped as the teacher and student stopped and made eye contact, "Tatsuki-chan go home."

Tatsuki's lips slipped from the balloon sending it flying through the air, "What?" Tatsuki replied in disbelief, "Why? I just got to the last step of the jutsu and you want me to leave? Give me one good reason!" She was on a roll. Sure she was a little tired, but that was the price one paid for good training.

"It's after ten at night and it's a weekday."

"You barely go to school yourself, why should I?"

"…B-Because I'm your sensei, that's why. Doesn't that mean you're supposed to listen to me?"

If nothing else had been drilled into Tatsuki's head from her years and years of martial arts instruction it was to respect her master… even if she didn't really respect him. And Naruto was definitely her master as he had definitely taught her skills. It wasn't like he was asking her to do something unreasonable, he was just telling her to go home and rest, even if she felt full enough of energy to burst at the moment.

"Fine, damn you Naruto-sensei." Tatsuki said, grumbling to herself as she started walking towards the exit, "But I'm practicing this when I get home! I'm going to get this down by the end of the week!"

"Uh… do your homework?"

"Kiss my ass!"

"Fair enough." Naruto finally conceded as Tatsuki stomped upstairs to leave the building and head home. He turned back towards Yoruichi and the Shinigami observers who were probably going to report that little episode just for shits and giggles, "So that was my student Tatsuki-chan. Isn't she sweet?"

Yoruichi couldn't help grinning at his expense, "About as cuddly as a pit viper she is." So far not a great first impression, but hey, she was having fun, "So about those rooms."

"I already have a place I plan on staying." Rukia said as she excused herself and headed after Tatsuki to leave the training area and the building, "Thank you for extending the offer, but I'd feel more comfortable there than anywhere else."

Well it wasn't really any skin off of Naruto, Yoruichi, or anyone else's nose if she already had a place to room. Wherever that was wasn't really their business, but it was still a curious topic, "I wonder where she's going." Rangiku wondered aloud, crossing her arms over her ample chest.

XxX

(Sometime Later – With Uryuu)

Uryuu had the strangest feeling that he just couldn't shake off no matter what he did. He had doubled around so many different routes instead of going straight home in an effort to clear his mind and possibly get over whatever sensation he was feeling. To no avail though, as he had wandered about deep into the night. The streetlights had long since come on, and yet he still felt like prey being stalked.

He felt like a small mammal being cornered by a cobra instead of the mongoose he should have felt like. Damn his lack of powers. Damn Kurotsuchi Mayuri. Damn his own impatience. He didn't even end up avenging his grandfather the way he had intended to with his use of the Letzt Stil, thus the gambit and the sacrifice was all for naught.

Eventually he came to a stop on the empty city sidewalk he had been walking on. Turning to his right he found that his walk had taken him from the northern side of town where Mother Base was, past his own house west all the way to the river that marked the edge of town that he was steadily walking south along. His aimless wandering had wound up with him circling his own neighborhood several times before heading out in that direction and yet still, nothing came of his venture.

'Lacking powers must be making me extra paranoid.' Uryuu thought to himself, pushing his glasses up on his face for the sake of his composure although no one was around to see him. However to Uryuu's credit, just because one was paranoid did not mean that there wasn't something out to get them. Without any warning, Uryuu made to jump to the side and slid down the grassy hill to his right in order to avoid the bites of multiple snakes that had seemingly appeared from nowhere, 'Maybe it's helping heighten my own natural instincts though?'

Landing on the flat and grassy field below that reached from the hill to the riverside, Uryuu looked up at the snakes that were slithering their way down towards him. He wasn't much for serpents, but no kind of luck would have several of them all gunning at him for once.

"For a powerless burden you sure are attentive, or is that more akin to being jumpy?" A man asked with feathery looking brown hair and sporting a goatee. He wore a white button-up shirt, a tie, and a light vest with brown slacks with his hands carelessly sunk into his pockets. Around his neck was wrapped a gold and black snake with green eyes, "If I were as weak as you are I'd be jumpy too admittedly. It's so hard being a normal human after being several notches above that for so long, isn't it little Quincy?"

From the way that most of Uryuu's clothes prominently displayed the Quincy cross, even if one didn't know that he had once had powers one could accurately surmise that he had a connection with the tribe.

Uryuu kept down the alarm in his person at being confronted. He never even sensed the approach, and this person knew of those with abilities to say the least. Thus he was another of the Bounts, just not the one that had engaged Naruto the other day, "Don't be so sure I'm so helpless. Now what kind of business does a Bount have with me?"

"For the sake of just not calling me Bount…" The man said in an annoyed manner, "My name is Utagawa Ryo. And my business with you? Since when does a python need to have business with the prey it stumbles across? That's all you are essentially in the grand scheme to a Bount, food."

Uryuu chuckled slightly at the broad generalization, "Well sorry to say, I'm not really on the menu."

"Cute." Ryo said coldly with a smirk on his face, "As if prey gets to choose whether or not it gets eaten. But it looks like someone such as yourself requires a little softening up first. No problems with that. Fried is wonderful at that practice." The snake around his neck extended its lower half to a lengthy amount with a spade-like tail tip. Ryo seemed amused that Uryuu looked ready to try and fight him. He couldn't have been serious. Running would have been the best option for him.

Uryuu's hand moved towards his pocket where his cell phone lay as he kept his eyes on Ryo and prepared to stall in time to call someone for help. About to spring into action he felt himself unable to move and looked down to find snakes constricting his legs, holding him in place, 'How! I kept sight of all of the snakes he had with him at the start!'

"The number of snakes that Fried can form isn't a finite or set number boy. As long as she touches something, or there is something that her imagination can construe as a snake be it a pipe or even something as miniscule as a crack in the floor, it can become one." Ryo said smugly upon seeing the shocked look on Uryuu's face, "How unfortunate for you." With that, he used the whip to bind the rest of Uryuu's body, holding him entirely in place as he walked over to him, "I wonder how a Quincy's soul tastes. Too bad for me I can't necessarily find out for myself."

Why couldn't he? Ryo had Uryuu dead to rights, he wasn't going to be going anywhere. Why not just suck out his soul like he had done to other humans that he himself had found?

As Ryo got closer to him he quickly jumped back away from Uryuu as a strange looking weapon landed where he had been standing. Had it hit him it would have taken a massive chunk out of his leg.

"Dynamic Entry!"

Tatsuki flew at the man with a kick that was far faster than anything she could have done before training with the others. Still, it was not enough to hit Ryo as he again moved himself out of the path of her attack, "What exactly was that supposed to be? You'll never hit me with a regular kick!"

"First attack is always a feint asshole." Tatsuki said, still kneeling down from her flying kick attempt but with a smirk on her face despite not even getting close to hitting her target.

"Hadou #31: Shakkahou (Way of Destruction #31: Red Fire Cannon)!"

A red pillar of energy flew at Ryo from a blindspot that he turned in time to see as Fried turned her malleable body into a shield to circumvent the blast from causing extensive burning and concussive damage. He looked through the clearing smoke to see Rukia in a Gigai, standing there with her hand still outstretched from firing the attack, "A Shinigami and a regular human girl coming to help a Quincy?" It seemed almost humorous to him.

Rukia's eyes darted from the Bount to Uryuu, "Uryuu are you alright?"

"I'm fine." He said as he watched Tatsuki yank her thrown trench knife out of the ground to place back in her grasp, ready for hand-to-hand combat, "Are you sure you should fight him?"

Tatsuki's eyes shone with the prospect of the challenge before her instead of choosing to balk at it. She gripped the metal knuckle-dusters tightly, feeling her chakra flow through them to increase her punching power, "I'm not as weak as I used to be. Hell, I'm not even as weak as I used to be last month, or last week for that matter. And ghost girl here chased me down and started following me home for some reason so we've got that going for us too."

Rukia puffed her cheeks out indignantly at being called ghost girl. Tatsuki knew full well who she was, "You know my name! And I wasn't following you, I was going to Ichigo's house and we just happened to be going in the same direction!"

"Why are you going to Ichigo's house anyway? It's almost midnight!"

"That's where I'm staying. There's a room there for me."

"What room? There is no room." Tatsuki said, standing up out of her fighting stance to look at Rukia with a curious tilt to her head. She knew full well the layout of Ichigo's home, due to their being friends and the fact that her house was not far from his own at all. They wouldn't let her sleep in the clinic for certain, that was for actual patients and not for prolonged stays at that, "Even Ichigo's sisters have to sleep in the same room."

Rukia's cheeks reddened as she tried to avoid eye contact with the human martial-artist/ninja-in-training, "That's not important right now. We have an enemy to face." She said, trying to get the issue to drop so that they could focus on the enemy at hand, "Who and what are you?"

"He's a Bount named Utagawa Ryo." Uryuu said, seeing as how Rukia wasn't as aware of the situation as Tatsuki was, "They're people with powerful abilities that keep immortality by eating human souls. This is the situation we're currently dealing with here. They're attacking humans in Karakura Town."

Rukia narrowed her eyes at the smug-looking Ryo who didn't seem to feel very hampered by facing three opponents. Though Uryuu was basically useless in all regards when it came to combat, but either way it was still two-on-one.

"The snakes!" Uryuu shouted as they quit keeping a hold on his legs and attacked the nearby Tatsuki, moving at her as one conjoined vine of bared fangs.

Tatsuki flipped her trench knives upside down in her hands so that the sharp pointed teeth trailing off the edge of the weapons were upright as she stood in a boxing stance as opposed to her usual one, signifying her preparedness to use them to slash instead of just as a punch with a nasty kick to them.

And slash she did, cutting her way right through the snakes and reverting them to nothing before turning to Ryo who seemed to be clapping in a patronizing manner, "A human that isn't a helpless sheep to be lead to slaughter. That's a refreshing change of pace."

"You won't be thinking that after I kick your ass." Tatsuki said before swiftly moving in an attempt at disguising her intended movements, but she was not fast enough to do so and found the tail of Fried coming right her way. Luckily Rukia was still there and hadn't chosen to bow out of the battle. With the use of Shunpo she appeared in between Ryo and Tatsuki and kept the spear from potentially damaging the girl much to Tatsuki's initial chagrin, 'Why is she getting involved in my fight?'

Tatsuki's thoughts went back to the fight as she jumped over Rukia and delivered a high kick directed at Ryo. The man merely scoffed as he used Fried's body to block her leg. Tatsuki twisted her body after making contact to try delivering a punch but the snake's body wrapped around her leg and jerked her back, sending her to the ground before she could finish her second attack.

A scoff came from the Bount as Fried wrapped around the length of his arm, tail extending straight outward from his hand to form a blade of sorts.

Taking this as an invitation to fight once more, Tatsuki stood back up and charged directly at him with her trench knives handy before a smirk washed onto Ryo's face.

"Arisawa look down!" Uryuu shouted to Tatsuki in warning.

The girl did just as instructed and saw snakes rapidly slithering through the grass at her from multiple angles all around her including in front from the direction she was rushing towards. Gasping to herself as they all launched from the ground at her to bite into her, Tatsuki disappeared in a puff of smoke, leaving a log in place where she had been as the snakes bit into it futilely.

Ryo narrowed his eyes at the Kawarimi, "Such a slippery technique."

"Ye lord! Mask of flesh and bone, flutter of wings, ye who bears the name of Man! Truth and temperance, upon this sinless wall of dreams unleash but slightly the wrath of your claws!" Rukia said, again taking advantage of Tatsuki's impulsive charging attack style to get in position to begin an incantation and adequately assault Ryo with another Kidou, "Hadou #33: Soukatsui (Way of Destruction #33: Blue Fire, Crash Down)!"

From Rukia's hand a surge of blue energy formed before she fired it in a rather large wave at Ryo, getting his eyes to widen at the attack. Fried was barely able to shift into a shield for him to use, but he still took a fairly significant brunt of the blast, as did the landscape as a trench had been carved out of the ground where the Soukatsui had traveled and even grass that hadn't been within the field of the Kidou found itself burning.

The dust cleared from Rukia's blast and Ryo himself found the sleeves of his white button-up shirt burned off up to his shoulders. His vest was worse for wear and might as well have been and the skin on his arms had varying degrees of burn damage done to them, "Fighting as a team? I guess you're all so weak that you need to cover each other in battle." His voice was very angry and it was clear that he was in a substantial amount of pain from the way it was wavering and the way that his arms were quivering.

"It's stupid to think we're weak just because we're fighting together." Rukia said standing and waiting in a basic combat stance, "Even if you were a superior opponent wouldn't that just be more justification to fight together? Shinigami don't operate in squads just for the hell of it." Well most of the time anyway… at least as far as the unseated squad members went, and with the exception of the 11th Division.

So this was what fighting actual Shinigami would be like? The human girl was a pest, the Quincy was powerless, but the Shinigami was extremely skilled at ranged spells even without leaving her faux body. It didn't matter in the end. It wasn't like it was something he couldn't handle. The battle was far from over and he always had one obvious method to regain the clear-cut advantage.

"Strength in numbers I see." Ryo said in a derogatory manner, "Well no matter what you all still have one very specific weakness that you weren't covering!" With that he sent Fried along the ground rapidly towards Uryuu who hadn't moved from his original place since the battle had begun, creating dozens and dozens of snakes as the Bount's doll moved in one straight-ahead rush of fangs, "Numbers don't mean a thing when one of you happens to be absurdly weak!"

Rukia's eyes widened at the sight, there was no way Uryuu could move out of the way of such an attack without access to his powers, "Uryuu!"

'Uryuu' smirked before a puff of smoke covered his body. The smoke was sent swirling around rapidly as a feminine voice emerged from the area he had seemingly been in, "I can do this… combine power and rotation, in my own way…" The smoke was blown away and cleared to reveal it had been Tatsuki in Henge and she was currently holding a blue orb between both of her hands, seemingly in awe of it before focusing on the threat before her and charging forward.

Rukia raised an eyebrow as Tatsuki charged the snakes down with the spinning blue ball of energy in hand, "It's a visible mass of Reiryoku… or is it? It doesn't feel quite like pure spiritual energy, but it's pure energy in general." The power she could feel flowing off of it was more than obvious though.

"Rasengan (Spiraling Sphere)!" Tatsuki met the wash of snakes head-on and plowed right through them, throwing them all about and reverting them back to nothing as she drove Fried back. The doll retracted back to Ryo to protect him once it was clear that the Rasengan would blow through the snakes in front of it.

"What a strange human girl you are!" Ryo said excitedly upon seeing the Rasengan and wondering just how much power it must have taken to form an attack with visible energy and retain its form, "Your soul is probably the most powerful I'll have eaten in quite some time! I was getting sick of the small fries!"

"Bakudou #4: Hainawa (Way of Binding #4: Crawling Rope)!"

A yellow crackling rope of energy wrapped around Ryo's body, pulling his arms to his sides. He turned his head to see that once again it was Rukia using a Kidou to attack him, in this case binding his movements the way that he had tried to bind theirs for the majority of the fight, "Like I said…" Rukia commented with a smirk, "What's the use in fighting alone when you don't have to?"

Tatsuki grinned to herself at having her target immobilized and boosted a jump over Fried. Ryo's inability to control his arms kept Fried from being able to adequately try intercepting her, thus Tatsuki was able to slam the completed Rasengan into him from above, smashing a crater into the ground beneath them.

Ryo's eyes had rolled back into his head from the attack as he lay lifeless on the ground. A satisfied look washed over Tatsuki's face despite the fact that she was panting heavily. Naruto was probably going to kick her ass if he found out that she had chakra exhaustion, but in her opinion it was well worth it as Fried's body began to turn to dust at her feet.

"The Rasengan… is it really that strong?" She asked herself. Once it made contact with him, Ryo's body seemed to have no resistance to it whatsoever. She knew she had pretty much broken every bone in his torso when she ground the jutsu into him from above. A regular punch from her probably would have made him double over at best if it even did that, but the Rasengan pulverized the ground that it didn't even touch.

She fell onto her backside, no longer able to really stand due to her tired state as Rukia walked over and looked at the deceased remains of the Bount, "You're skilled enough of a fighter to kill an opponent like that?" She had ample help, but that wasn't really the point either.

"I was the second strongest girl in Japan before I ever even learned anything about fighting from Naruto-sensei. It's not like anyone had to teach me what to do to win a battle." Tatsuki tried to brag but found her arms too heavy to lift for no good reason at the moment, "Oh man, how can he make holding the Rasengan look so easy? It's a total drain."

"Where's Uryuu?" Rukia asked, remembering Tatsuki being in his place.

Tatsuki pointed towards the river, "When you did your blue blast thing I shoved him in the water and transformed into him so that I could get a decent chance at getting snake-guy's guard down." She then crawled out of her crater and looked towards the river, "Oi, Uryuu are you alright?"

Wet, squishy footsteps attracted their attention to another direction where Uryuu walked up to them thoroughly soaked, "I'm fine… but you could have at least warned me before randomly shoving me into the cold lake Arisawa." He looked down into the crater where the dust that used to be Utagawa Ryo sat, "You defeated him."

"He was arrogant." Rukia commented, "He only saw Tatsuki as 'food' and you as powerless. I was the only potential threat to him as far as he was concerned." And she hadn't even been fully healed. If she had been then Soukatsui would have torn his arms off instead of just giving him third degree burns all over, "He wasn't very durable."

Uryuu started wringing out his shirt to get the water out, "I don't think that the Bounts are as durable as a Shinigami, at least this one wasn't. More so than regular people, significantly so, but in comparison to stronger Shinigami I don't think so. Naruto told us about the fight he had with another one a few days prior, she didn't engage him directly, instead relying on her doll companion to fight him, much like Ryo and Fried."

Getting to the Bount past the doll was the trick though, but because Rukia and Tatsuki pretty much attacked at the same time it kept him from getting a foothold on the fight. Maybe with more time he could have worked them over more.

"Can someone help me up please?" Tatsuki asked from her place sitting on the ground, red-faced from her previous exertion, "…And help me home. I really can't get up. I think I'm out of chakra."

"Chakra?" Uryuu and Rukia said simultaneously. Uryuu had never even bothered to ask about Naruto's abilities since he wasn't a Shinigami, but now that he thought about it his power always felt different. Rukia simply wasn't aware of the concept.

"Physical _and_ spiritual energy together." Tatsuki said as Rukia grabbed her hand and pulled her up, setting one of Tatsuki's arms over her shoulder to keep her upright, "Sorry. I'm not that strong yet." But with a complete Rasengan she had a new wrinkle to her skills when her hands and feet weren't up to snuff. She couldn't wait for the next national tournament; even without the use of any ninjutsu she was going to clean up and walk off with the title without breaking a sweat.

Rukia spared the girl a smile as she shifted Tatsuki's weight over her neck comfortably, "It's alright. You're definitely a strong human, even if you can't beat a seated officer Shinigami yet. But if fighting a Shinigami were that easy for humans then we wouldn't be in any position to guide souls would we?"

"Well then…" Uryuu said, still rather put out over his soaked state, "I think now's as good a time as any to go home. I'm already going to hear enough from my dad showing up looking like this." With that he went off his own way to his house for the night while Rukia helped Tatsuki walk in their own direction.

After going their way for a short while, Tatsuki turned her head towards Rukia, a question on her mind, "So are you a seated officer?"

"No, I'm not."

"…Could I beat you?"

"*laughs* No. If I were at full power you couldn't. You probably still can't now. I didn't even use my Shikai."

"…I don't even know what that is."

Again, much like Uryuu earlier, neither of them were aware of something that was subtly off. The slight bubbling coming from the river near the site of their battle went unnoticed by the two girls vacating the area, as two stalk-like bulges of water with bottlecaps at their centers rose up slightly before merging back with the river.

XxX

(The Next Day – Karakura High School)

Ichigo, Gaara, Chad, Uryuu, Orihime, and the returning to class Rukia watched as Tatsuki stood lording her recent success over Naruto as he repeatedly banged his head on his desk. He was attracting attention from the other students that were leaving the room for lunch, but they didn't feel like being in the same room as the weird blonde guy that had been slamming his head onto his desk for the last three minutes.

A satisfied self-satisfied look was on Tatsuki's face, "So Naruto-sensei… what else do you have for me?" Two months and she was way faster than he was as a genin and had the Rasengan down. Yeah he'd have to give her a bit of a reality check in a spar later to keep her from getting the big head.

Speaking of heads, with one final slam on the desk Naruto picked his head up revealing the angry red bruise forming on his forehead, "You got the Rasengan…" He said shaking his head in disbelief, "I know the next generation is supposed to be stronger than those that came before them and that you're like at least two hundred generations after mine but seriously, that wasn't even a month!" At least he could take solace in the fact that she couldn't do it with one hand yet… but then again he himself took years to be able to perform the Rasengan with one hand. At least she didn't need a clone to keep the shape stable like he did, "Well still, keep practicing to do it with one hand, it's more useful that way."

Ichigo had been rather surprised around midnight of the previous night. After dropping Ririn's Gikongan into a little bird plushy he had watched her beat up Kon in his lion plushy body for about forty-five minutes for kicks until she said she sensed a Bount. Said Bount sensing then faded from her and a short while later Rukia appeared knocking on his window… on the second floor.

Why she had come to his house once again just to stay in his closet he was remiss to ask mostly due to his happiness in seeing her again after leaving her in the Soul Society, thus she quickly put her old spot right back together and had promptly shut the door and gone off to sleep.

The next morning he tried telling her what he knew of the whole Bount situation and was regaled with a tale of her fighting one moments before reaching Ichigo's house. Hearing that Tatsuki was also involved in the fight was surprising even though he had seen her training and had been told by his old friend that she was not going to let herself be left behind.

"So what now?" Ichigo asked the lot of them. Ririn rested on Rukia's shoulder in plushy form as she had more or less fallen in love with Rukia upon seeing her and speaking to her the previous night, Noba was in a anthropomorphic turtle plushy with dress clothes that was attached to Chad's bag, and Kuroudo was currently in the form of a pink rabbit-looking purse that seemed to be way too happy to be with Orihime.

"I'm not really here to help." Rukia admitted begrudgingly, "I'm here with two other Shinigami to observe how Equilibrium handles issues that they come across." She shouldn't really have even gotten involved the previous night, but not trying to help Uryuu after he had lost his powers helping her would have been deplorable, "I'm not to step in unless it's truly required or I am attacked. Ask your leader."

Upon hearing said suggestion, Ichigo turned an eye towards Naruto who still had a red mark on his forehead from slamming it into his desk moments earlier, "Yeah, that's not really the most inspiring thing I've heard today."

"Oh shut up Wonder-boy." Naruto said, rubbing his bruise-mark with a frown on his face, "All we can really do is patrol and try to narrow down a hideout in the meantime. I mean even with Ririn, Noba, and Kuroudo it's not a perfect system to find them. They have to be doing something first." If they were going to be on the lookout for something, Naruto hoped that he would be the one to find Yoshino again.

"So you plucked me up out of the warehouse for nothing?" Ichigo asked incredulously. Now he wasn't going to go back anytime soon, but as a teenager he reserved the right to complain to his heart's content.

Naruto narrowed his blue eyes at Ichigo's brown ones and let out a snort. It was to be said that he was not a battlefield strategist by any stretch of the imagination. He had stuck with what had worked for him since he was a child and hadn't changed his style much at all. Still, he hadn't just done nothing for the millennia, he had picked up basic common sense when it came to the art of combat and he had forgotten more about battle and conflict in general than Ichigo would ever know… at least in the timespan of his human life anyway.

"No… I plucked you out of the warehouse so that you could actually do your own job mister Substitute Shinigami." Naruto said, pointing at Ichigo's badge that was hanging from the belt area of his uniform pants, "I've got you, Gaara, Hidan, Orihime, Chad, Tatsuki-chan, and Uryuu… and to a lesser extent Urahara because he doesn't really listen to me unless I pay him, and Yoruichi-chan because she doesn't really listen to me unless she wants to."

Uryuu frowned at being listed among the active Equilibrium roster, "Why did you say that I work for you? I don't serve any purpose as I am now. You must really have a lot of employee loyalty." The Quincy quipped dryly.

That got Naruto to perk up significantly, "We might be able to fix that little problem you have." Uryuu's eyes widened, shoving a grin on Naruto's face at his reaction, "It might work, it might not. But it's better than nothing right? We thought about it last night."

"Why didn't you call me?" Uryuu snapped. The shock of being told he might be able to get his powers back along with the rising anger inside of him around the fact that it was kept from him even for the matter of a few hours forced him to act out.

Tatsuki decided to use that moment to point out something from the previous evening, "I shoved you into the river remember? Your phone seriously can't work after that." If it did then she wanted whatever model Uryuu happened to be sporting at the moment.

Blushing at the thought, especially since he was still mindlessly carrying the useless phone around in his pocket even then, Uryuu sat down at a nearby desk and regained his usual composure, "So, how would you go about restoring my abilities?" He asked, and the others not in the know listened attentively.

Gaara spoke up from his place standing by Naruto's desk, "We will use the healing ability of Inoue-san to heal the damage you did to yourself from your own technique."

Without even being seen, Naruto appeared suddenly behind Orihime noting her nervous outlook at the whole situation. The girl was normally so bright and cheery, he liked that, but when pressed with something that required others to rely on her extensively she had something of a low self-esteem, "Yes, Orihime here is the cure for what ails you Uryuu! She can definitely do it!"

"W-What?" Orihime said, stammering as she dug her heels into the ground to try and stop Naruto from pushing her forward, "I can't do something like that! I'm not that good at healing!"

Gaara's seafoam green eyes blinked at the girl. He had heard of her powers, had seen her powers firsthand with his own eyes. They were utterly amazing. She returned the lower half of Hidan's body. It simply didn't exist and she seemed to restore it from nothing. Healing on that scale was god-like, "Why do you not believe that you can do such a thing?" Gaara asked her, honestly wanting to hear her answer, "You have performed feats far more extraordinary on Hidan as practice. All you have to do is negate Uryuu's body's own rejection of his Reiryoku."

She could heal a person split in half with their body parts all the way in different sections of a battlefield, and she had been getting better and better with the constant practice she routinely got. She could definitely handle something like this. It wasn't like she was restoring his power, she was just unblocking what was keeping it constricted.

"Yeah." Naruto said, patting her on the shoulders to try and convince her it was entirely possible, "It's like you can think about what you want to fix and you just do it. So think about the way Uryuu used to be before he lost his powers when you do your healing thing. Yoruichi-chan said that's how it should work for you."

The attention was starting to get to her a bit as Orihime averted her eyes to the ground, "I'm not sure, but if you all think I can do it then I'll try my best!" She said, perking up again with a smile. A friend of hers needed help, and if she had a chance of being the one that could do so then she'd give it her all.

"All I can ask of you is to try." Uryuu said, trying to disguise how much he really cared about getting his powers back. He thought they were gone forever, so even the slightest chance of them returning seemed like the answer to his prayers… if he were a religious man, "When can we do this?"

"We have all the time in the world to work it out after school is over." Ichigo said to the others before turning to Orihime, "If Inoue can fix him then that would be great. No pressure though." He said with a confident look on his face.

XxX

(Bount Mansion)

"So Ryo is dead." Kariya said, sitting in his office with his Shinigami bodyguard by his side, standing guard watchfully as always, "Well it's not that much of a setback honestly. Ryo seemed too ambitious for his own good. I could see the way he often looked at me with disdain. At least he served some sort of purpose in the end."

Sitting on a chair in an adjacent corner of the room comfortably, Cain let out a laugh as he rolled a golden coin back and forth over the back of his fingers, "That's so cold Kariya. Is that how you feel about all of us?"

"Of course not." A smile appeared on Kariya's face at the mere asking of the question, "I care for all of my subordinates. Those like yourself and Maki here, and all of the others as well, you are all nothing like Ryo. And he was foolish enough to underestimate a Shinigami, a mistake that would have gotten him killed later anyway."

"Uzumaki would have massacred him anyway." Cain remarked in a sing-song manner off-handedly before suddenly grabbing his coin tightly, "The twins said that Ryo found a Quincy before he was killed. That's interesting isn't it? He's powerless though, totally useless."

Kariya noticed the slight scoff that came from Maki upon hearing Cain reference Uzumaki Naruto. Every opponent or possible conflict that Cain ever brought up was always inevitably brought back to somehow talking about that man. After being around them for quite some time and getting used to them Kariya figured that Maki would have gotten used to him and his… quirks.

"I'd like an eye kept on this Quincy anyway." Kariya said evenly before looking to Maki, "And could you ask the twins to prepare for a little pest control as well? We're at the point where we're attracting a lot of attention."

Maki nodded and strode his way from the room, shutting the door to the office behind him and leaving Kariya and Cain alone within. Cain looked at the shut door and raised his middle finger at it before turning back towards Kariya, "I hate that guy. If he didn't follow you at your heels like a puppy I'd have taken him out a long time ago."

Hearing Cain gripe about Maki got a few chuckles out of Kariya, "And you believe with all your heart that you could defeat Maki? He was a seated officer when he was a part of the Seireitei and it isn't like he's been growing weaker since then. I wouldn't have kept him around if he had been."

"Of course I can beat him!" Cain said, offended at the thought of losing a battle, especially to a Shinigami, "I can beat anyone! I can beat any of the Bounts you managed to round up, I can beat Master Koga… maybe even you too." He said with a treacherous tone and a gleam in his eye that put a hard look on the face of Kariya. Cain then grinned maniacally and laughed a bit, "But I don't really care. I'm just killing time, you know that. I don't want to lead anything, I just want to find one person and fight him. And we already know he's in Karakura Town don't we?"

"You've certainly been working towards that ever since he humiliated you all those years ago haven't you?" Kariya asked Cain, the air between them having cleared. Ambitious Cain was, but his ambition didn't have anything to do with going against Kariya or his goals, "You'd better hope Yoshino doesn't get to him first. She wants a piece of him as well."

Cain laughed loudly at the thought of Yoshino being able to kill his target, "If she can take him out then I guess he really wasn't worth obsessing over for all of those years, for her or me. But you really ought to keep that woman locked up or something. You and the others think I'm a maverick, but at least I hang around here when I'm told to."

"Yes she is something of a problem, with her constantly going against me just out of spite." Kariya remarked before smirking, "But she's been docile since Uzumaki appeared. She hasn't even tried to leave since you returned her the last time. I think once again there's a way for me to use our dear friend Uzumaki Naruto to get what we want."

* * *

Omake: An Easy Detail

"This is the best mission ever!" Rangiku said to herself happily with a cup of sake in her hand as she sat comfortably around a table, "No fighting, no real need to do anything but observe. And it helps that the people I'm observing are so fun!"

"Yes." Urahara said, sitting across from her with the brim of his hat shading his eyes, though they were firmly on her chest, "I could certainly think of worse ways to spend my time." He certainly had to thank Yamamoto for allowing such a fine specimen of a Shinigami female to come to his neck of the world of the living.

Rangiku looked around with a drunken blush on her face, "Hey… where is Shuuhei, and where is Yoruichi-san? I haven't seen either one of them in a while. I don't really like drinking alone you know?" Yoruichi had definitely done him a solid by vacating the area to the basement training ground in order to spar for a bit with Shuuhei, wanting to see what the lad was capable of, at least that was what she said. Now he definitely had a chance to attempt to woo the rather luscious Matsumoto Rangiku, in his own mind at least.

Urahara looked down and drew a circle on the table with his finger, "I'm here…" He said lamely, but was thoroughly ignored by the lovely lady. And here he thought he was a very interesting drinking partner. Well he was interesting to himself anyway.

"Kisuke, Jinta's pickin' on Ururu again an' I can't find Tessai, Dondochakka, or Pesche!" Sporting a new Gigai designed just for her while Urahara ran tests on her in the meantime, Nel ran into the room before bumping into the table and falling on her backside right by Rangiku. She wore a regular looking red dress for a girl her size and a green bucket hat like Urahara's. She looked up at Rangiku and blinked curiously, "Who're you lady?"

Rangiku just looked down at Nel for a few moments before letting out a high-pitched squeal as she picked the little Arrancar up and hugged her tightly as she tried to struggle to get free, "She's so cute Urahara-san! Is she your daughter?"

"Oh no." Urahara said, seeing his window of opportunity open back up now that Nel was there, "But I just had to take care of her since she needed me so much. It's my nature, I just love children."

More accurately he loved the cheap manual labor that children provided, but Nel wasn't really old enough to work so that point was moot. She mostly just bounced around for a lot of the time spending it evenly with each person in the shop. Dondochakka and Pesche hung around to watch over her and were useful enough as lab assistants for him and Tessai so it balanced out in the end.

A gasp suddenly came from Rangiku as she got a good look at Nel's face, "How did a little girl get a scar like that on her face?" She asked before glaring over at Urahara, eyes half-lidded from her inebriated state, "You're such an irresponsible guardian!"

"She had that before I met her, I swear!" Urahara said, suddenly pulling Nel from Rangiku's grip, "I would never do anything to hurt her, right Nel?" He asked her with a big smile on his face in an effort to stay on Rangiku's good side.

Nel just looked at him owlishly before grinning just as widely and turning to Rangiku, "Yeah, that's right! Urahara didn't give Nel the scar. Nel doesn't remember how she got it… but it's okay, cuz Nel's a masochist!"

…And there went whatever chance Urahara had, right out the window.

Damn it Nel…

* * *

**Well my dad just stapled me in the right arm seven times the other day for shits and giggles in a random scuffle that we started for each of our own entertainments… and it didn't really hurt by the way, go figure. In addition to that my grandmother, rest her soul, had passed from this Earth during the time (this occurred after he stapled me by the way in case it matters). I'm taking it well by the way, but that's probably because the funeral hasn't happened yet. If I'm ever going to fall apart it'll probably be right then so I should go buy some dark sunglasses.**

**So yeah… that's what I've got going for me. How was your weekend?**

**Anyway, chapter's up. Hope you enjoyed. I'll catch you all around sooner rather than later.**

**Kenchi out.**


	22. Wetwork

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. I'm going to haunt Kubo's house with the use of expensive special effects specialists and will intimidate him into either signing over the rights of Bleach to me… or calling Ghostbusters.

Both would be major wins for me in my book.

Bill Murray rules the world.

**Chapter 22: Wetwork**

* * *

Like clockwork, after school ended everyone filtered their way out of the building and over to the Mother Base hideout to get to work on their respective things of interest. Ichigo and Chad were steadily on lookout duty with the Mod Souls for a Bount attack as was Hidan. Gaara went over to Urahara's Shop to go grab Yoruichi and see what she had done with the Shinigami watching their progress during the day.

Meanwhile Tatsuki stood in front of Naruto in the training ground of Mother Base with an uneasy look on her face. The reasoning being that upstairs Orihime was busy trying to figure her powers to fix Uryuu, "Maybe I should be up there with her?" Tatsuki said demurely, a sharp contrast from her usual attitude and outlook.

"Oh no you don't." Naruto said, tapping his foot impatiently on the ground, still wearing his school uniform having not even bothered to change, "Since you seem to be burning through everything I'm teaching you so far let's see exactly where your ceiling is so I know what to focus on for later. Rinnegan (Samsara Eye)!" Naruto's eyes turned to the strange ripple pattern before he barked out another order, "Now channel chakra."

Tatsuki's hands slammed together in the ram seal as she built up her chakra as instructed, "There, is this good?" She asked as Naruto stared at her intently.

Remaining silent as he continued to look at her, Naruto's face scrunched up in thought, "There's an easier way to figure this out… but the trees that I'd need to make paper from for the easy way don't exist, and I'm no gardener."

"What are you trying to do?" Tatsuki asked, wondering just how long she'd have to flex her chakra coils for Naruto to find whatever he was looking for, "Maybe if you tell me I can help."

"You can't because there's no way you'd know." Naruto commented glibly and without blinking, "Unless you know off the top of your head what your chakra nature is?"

Tatsuki tilted her head curiously, "Chakra what now?"

Naruto didn't immediately answer, instead keeping silent for a few more seconds before smiling contently, "Ah, there, that makes sense. You're fire natured. Of course you are." He then frowned, "Of course you'd be natured at the kind of jutsu that I'm the worst at though." He seemed to be dealing with fire a lot lately.

All of this rapid-fire information was beginning to make Tatsuki's head hurt, "I'm confused. What's going on?"

Gesturing for her to sit down with him by the lake in the grass, Naruto began to explain as best he could. He hadn't had to do such a thing in a very, very long time, "You've seen me use electricity and wind and all kinds of stuff in my fights right?" Tatsuki nodded, of course she had, "Well it's an advanced form of manipulating your chakra. And your chakra nature just shows me what you'll have the easiest time with, which will be fire."

"I can make fire?" Tatsuki chirped questioningly, excited at the mere prospect of doing so. Being a ninja in Naruto's time had to have been the coolest job that ever existed.

"You will be, but you can't do it automatically now. You need your hand-seals and you need to get used to the feeling of the fire ninjutsu before I can show you other things you can do with it." Naruto explained, drawing the kanji for each basic chakra element in the soil, "Katon: Fire Release, Fuuton: Wind Release, Raiton: Lightning Release, Doton: Earth Release, and Suiton: Water Release are the five basics. In theory you can learn a ninjutsu for all of them, but you'll only have an affinity for one or two by the time you're thirty."

He wasn't sure about that. She might get them sooner. She was currently blowing all of his previous expectations about her development right out of the water with gusto.

Tatsuki raised her hand like she was in school, "But what about when you push and pull stuff around without even touching anything? What element is that?"

"It's not one, it's something that comes with having the Rinnegan." Naruto explained with a shrug, "Swift Release isn't a real element either. That one is actually what I got out of messing around with the Rinnegan powers and Lightning Release in my body. It takes more chakra than a normal person can keep going to work. But I'm not normal."

"Duh." Tatsuki said, but with no real intent in her voice, "So how do I learn how to do this stuff?"

A grin came across Naruto's face as he stood up and got Tatsuki to do the same, "For once I'm not going to give you a long list of mechanics and stuff to do before learning something… mostly because this has hand-seals so you just need to know the basic process on how to do something. Your first fire ninjutsu." He noted that the girl must have really loved fighting because she was bouncing from foot to foot on her toes with a smile that she just couldn't keep off of her face, "And you will be learning how to breathe fire. That's how most fire ninjutsu work, you have to pool your chakra in your stomach and exhale correctly."

"What is it? Come on, I'm _so_ ready!" Her exhaustion from the previous night and her sluggishness from that morning was all but forgotten. She just wanted more training, "What are the hand-seals?"

Both of them slowly lifted their hands up so that Naruto could show her the seals she would need to execute the jutsu, "Mi (Snake), Hitsuji (Ram), Saru (Monkey), I (Boar), Uma (Horse), and Tora (Tiger)." He let her go through the seals time and time again until she looked back up to him to show that she had it memorized for the moment, "Now I hate doing fire ninjutsu, but it's supposed to look like this." He made the hand-seals easily visible for her benefit and inhaled deeply as he turned out towards the lake, "Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu (Fire Release: Great Fireball Jutsu)!"

Tatsuki watched with bright eyes as a massive orb of scorching flames five times a human's size rocketed from Naruto's mouth and flew out over the lake for dozens of yards before dissipating into the air.

"I put too much chakra in that… I said my control with fire techniques was shoddy." Naruto commented while scratching his head, "Yours won't be that big. If it is then it's because you overloaded it and you'll feel like you just got through with a full spar against Yoruichi-chan. But anyway this is simple, there's no need to shape anything or really keep control over it. It's a big breath of air and you're pushing out fire."

Deciding to take it step-by-step, Tatsuki started slowly making hand-signs so she would remember them when it came time to actually execute the jutsu, "Pool the chakra in my stomach." She said to herself trying to get accustomed to the feeling of building chakra inside of her body, "Is this dangerous?"

"Kind of." Naruto admitted to her. She was breathing fire, of course it was dangerous, "That's why I put you by the lake. So if you catch yourself on fire you can jump right in until someone can heal you up. Now that you know what building the chakra feels like go ahead and give it a try."

You had to love the concern that the sensei showed his student.

At least he wasn't throwing her down a crevice… yet… because there was plenty of time for that later. Now was the time to teach his tomboy how to shoot fireballs.

Well no guts no glory.

Once more, Tatsuki went through the hand-seals at half-speed, building chakra inside of her body before taking a deep breath, "Katon: Goukakyuu no- *cough*!" Tatsuki choked while expelling the fireball, releasing a small burst of fire that barely reached out three feet. Tatsuki fell backwards onto the ground coughing black soot from her mouth, "*cough cough* I wasn't ready for that! It felt like my lungs and throat were on fire!"

Naruto dropped down to one knee and rubbed Tatsuki's back soothingly as she got all of her coughing out, "Yeah, it isn't going to be very fun this time. It won't be boring though."

"*cough* I hate you…"

"Now you know you don't mean that. When you stop coughing let's try again."

XxX

(With Gaara – Early Evening – Karakura Community Park)

After getting out of school, Gaara headed up to Urahara's Shop to check with the man on his progress with Nel's injury to her mask and to locate Yoruichi and figure out what she had been doing all day. If Orihime could heal Uryuu's injury then she could probably fix Nel's as well even if it was a very old wound. He would just have to wait and find out later if she had managed to pull it off before bringing it up.

Currently on his way back from the shop, Gaara walked serenely in the sunset. The rare person that passed him by seemed to stare at the large gourd that sat on his back, but not enough that it was extremely out there. If it was brought up he could just say it was an eccentric backpack.

The fact that Uryuu had been attacked the previous night put him on his guard as the streets were next to empty with a person coming into his vision every so often, but his concerns weren't centered on himself. One would have to work very hard if they wished to kill Gaara even on his worst day. No, Gaara's thoughts were stuck on his friend and the man that was technically his boss, Uzumaki Naruto. He tried to hide it well, but even after all those years Gaara could notice the nuances in his friend's behavior. Seeing the Yoshino woman shook him up, and it was understandable.

When he saw Hidan, even when he came across Gaara, Naruto had been given good foundational reasons as to why they existed so even when he had been surprised when he had come across Gaara in Hueco Mundo he more or less accepted it rather quickly. Now Yoshino hadn't come from nearly as far as Naruto's past, but her spirit hadn't been bound to holy land for eternity nor had she been a Hollow in hibernation, she had been as far as Naruto knew normal. He now knew that wasn't the case, but such a blast from the past was a spine-shaker.

The whole Bount thing was screwy. If all they were after was the souls of humans then why were they being caught now when not a peep had been heard from them before? Was there an endgame? Were they really foolish enough to roost in Karakura Town with its litany of defenders at the ready if all they wanted were souls? That couldn't be all that they wanted.

What trouble this whole thing was turning out to be, but for a first operation to get their feet wet Equilibrium couldn't really have asked for anything better to debut off of.

Gaara's cell phone began to go off as he enjoyed his time taking a side trip through the park on his way back to Mother Base. Finding a good place to take a break and sit down, Gaara fished the phone out of his pocket and set his gourd down next to him on the ground, "Hello?"

"_Hey Gaara. What's up, did you get lost or something? Yoruichi-chan and the Gotei 13 reps beat you back here by two hours."_

Hearing Naruto on the phone got Gaara to release a sigh, "I wasn't aware you had a mission for me that required my urgent attention Naruto." Gaara said in his even-toned manner of speaking, though it was clear he was being snippy in his commentary.

"_Well…I don't. But… *sigh* Yeah you're right. You're over 2000 years old you can take care of yourself. Take your time. If anything comes up I'll call you if we need you."_

"Feel free." Gaara said, looking at the nearby fountain that was spewing out water by the gallons. It didn't seem normal. Fountains weren't supposed to get full were they? Having lived his entire life (and afterlife) in a desert where water was scarce if it even existed at all, Gaara was unaware of normal fountain protocol. It just seemed off to him.

Gaara got up and walked over to the fountain to find it almost full as he had observed from afar. Someone needed to call city maintenance or something. Shut off the water, take some kind of precaution. What a waste otherwise. Didn't people know such a resource was precious?

As he neared the fountain Gaara saw two bottlecaps floating within, neither sitting at the top of the water or sitting at the bottom, something he narrowed his eyes at before the entire fountain of water burst up and tried to ensnare him or whatever it was trying to do. Luckily Gaara was aware enough of something being funny with the situation that he was able to evade the sneak attack.

The former Sunagakure shinobi let out a grunt as he quickly made it back to his gourd and placed it on his back, prepared for confronting his attacker, "You think you can simply attack me and win just like that?" Gaara said out loud for the benefit of whoever was attacking him, "I may not be as strong inside of my body as I was when I was alive, but I won't even have to leave my Gigai for this."

If he even had to leave his Gigai to fight whomever was facing him he would have been cautious in doing so. With the Shinigami watching over the activities of Equilibrium for the time being they wouldn't be able to ignore the absurd amount of Reiatsu that would immediately spring from Gaara's Arrancar form.

The cork of his gourd popped off and sand began to billow out in preparation for battle as he kept his eyes peeled. The water had seemingly taken the form of two large bulbous stalk-like globs that seemed alive, wiggling around as if they were about to attack Gaara again.

'It had to be water didn't it?' Gaara thought to himself with a frown evident on his otherwise non-expressive features, "You had better hope I don't find you." Gaara said before the water crashed directly at him, moving swiftly and cutting off any escape for him.

After smashing into Gaara his body turned into grains of sand that fell to the ground, soaked and battered.

The actual Gaara was nowhere in sight, but in the air, a large eye scanned the area around the park looking for the ones controlling the water creature that happened to be storming about on the ground. After getting sight of exactly what it was looking for, the eye dispersed into grains of sand.

XxX

"He seems to have run away brother."

"Indeed. Perhaps he is going to inform the Uzumaki person we've been hearing about of our location… but-."

"-We'll be long gone before then. Let's go Ban."

"Right behind you Hou."

As the two Bounts were about to leave their hiding place, another voice stopped them from doing so, "You thought I would run away from you? That's a very big insult to me just so you know." Gaara descended while standing on a platform of sand with his arms crossed over his chest. The two Bounts were actually young children. Two boys wearing dark grey shorts, brown sweatshirts, and hats. One had short hair and a red cap (Hou), and the other had a white skull cap and longer hair (Ban).

"So you found us?" Ban said, turning around with his twin brother to face Gaara, "But what are you going to do now?"

Gaara didn't even blink as his sand platform drifted to the ground and collapsed, allowing his sand to go back to its normal wispy, easily malleable form, "Capture you and interrogate you at Mother Base." He informed them, sounding casual over the whole matter, "Or you can just tell me what I want to know now and promise not to attack anymore living humans."

"We see…" Hou said, moving to a potentially defensive position as he saw Gaara's sand move around slowly, "But you have to understand, with a choice like that-."

"-There really isn't much of a choice at all." Ban said, finishing his twin's sentence for him. Gaara's sand moved to capture the pair and restrain them to be taken back to base, but as he did so their water doll came to their defense, stopping in front of them and forcing Gaara to avert his sand lest he find his signature shinobi weapon drenched and harder to use, "Our dolls Guhl and Günther are connected to us mentally, as am I with my own brother. We're the most powerful team due to the fact that we don't need to speak to communicate."

Gaara uncrossed his arms and began using his hands to guide his sand more precisely if this was what he would have to contend with. He hated water-users… at least he hated fighting them; mostly because water could affect his control over sand to the best of his ability and because he lived in a desert where water was scarce in the first place. Using water for ninjutsu always seemed like a waste to him.

Apparently they could control their water like his sand without any hand-seals at all. Kami, he hated not living in ninja times again when a person's technique could be broken down by the kind of hand-seals they used. Oh well, much like Naruto he worked better with a handicap and this was one hell of a handicap if he had ever faced one. A weaker body, a disadvantage against water, a two-on-one fight; yes it was quite the disadvantage.

Still, he had not gotten a decent battle in his Gigai outside of the spars he had with others like Chad, Tatsuki, and Naruto. He was overdue for a fight that would give him some work either way and this was as good a time as any for one.

"Well then, since you won't simply surrender to me..." Gaara said, not reacting to the threat the two posed him in any way, "Shall we begin?"

The answer of both Hou and Ban was to use their dolls that embodied water itself to blast at Gaara to assume their attack once more.

XxX

(Mother Base – Executive Floor – Uzumaki Naruto's Office/Quarters)

The front room of Naruto's designated area of the base was set up to look like the office of the Hokage back when he was a Konoha ninja. Gaara called it a subconscious yearning for something that he was unable to get in his own time. Naruto then proceeded to mention that Gaara's own front room of his office then looked just like his office when he was Kazekage, right down to the walls (he still wondered how Gaara managed _that_), and Gaara proceeded to shut up for the rest of the furnishing period of the base.

No one wanted to go into Hidan's room though, even to just see what it looked like. They were afraid of what they would see and thought they were better off not knowing.

So Naruto sat at his replica Hokage's desk in the big cushy chair behind it, the only exception was that there was no kanji for fire on the front of the desk, instead there was the simple swirl pattern that was his clan's insignia. In front of him in seats facing him were the Gotei 13 representatives; Shuuhei, Rangiku, and Rukia.

In his lap was Yoruichi for some reason, sitting contently. Not that he had a problem with that, but it didn't exactly scream professional or to take them seriously, especially with her smirking at him daring him to tell her to get off. Damn that woman was always trying to kill his attempt to look qualified. If she wasn't so great…

Maybe if he had some kage robes on that would have helped? The hat definitely would have made an impression for certain.

Wow, maybe Gaara was right, maybe he was subconsciously yearning for recognition as a kage?

Meh, there'd be time for that later. Not like there was a budget or anything, "So…" Naruto said to begin speaking at the little meeting, "You guys are supposed to be observing the way we operate. What exactly is that going to involve just so I know."

Shuuhei slouched comfortably in his chair, finding the environment a very calming place, "Well we're supposed to note as much of your personnel as we can, which we already did after seeing everyone, including the Ryoka from the Seireitei infiltration."

"Knew it." Yoruichi said quietly into Naruto's ear, chiming in between the 9th Division Lieutenant's words, "Way to try and be all cloak and dagger back at the meeting in the Seireitei." At least his bluff in front of Yamamoto served the purpose of him not running the risk of figuring out that Naruto would have lied to him about Hidan and Gaara's abilities. Whatever the Shinigami here would manage to collect on the pair would only be in their Gigai if they were smart enough to stay in them.

"Shush you." Naruto said, slapping her high up on the thigh behind the desk and out of sight. Yoruichi rolled her eyes as Naruto turned his attention back to Shuuhei, "So yeah, since you've seen everyone that works here what's next?"

Rangiku clapped her hands together once in a happy looking manner, "Well, next it's the actual observation part. One of us will observe the administration aspect of your group-." Shuuhei lifted his hand in acknowledgement of his role, "-Another will observe the day-to-day operatives that you have and see how they work-." Rukia nodded with a small smile on her face indicating that it would be her doing that, "-And the last one of us will be directly observing Karakura Town and seeing how your presence affects it overall. That one will be done by me!"

Shuuhei fought the urge to palm his face. Rangiku's observation of Karakura Town would be carried out… for around two hours. The rest of it would be done by way of her shopping and goofing around. He was well aware of how his longtime drinking partner would operate on such a mission.

On the other hand, Naruto and Yoruichi weren't aware, and this sounded like a completely plausible plan of action for the three Shinigami observers, "So we're just to act normally, as if nothing out of the ordinary is going on, right?" Shuuhei nodded and Yoruichi grinned almost unseen, "Well I think we have that well under control don't we Naruto?"

"Yes." Naruto said with a deadpan look on his face as Yoruichi pulled on his whisker-marked cheek, "Yoruichi-chan is always messing with me like this. It's totally normal."

Rukia's eyebrow raised up at hearing that bit of information while Yoruichi kept manipulating Naruto's face with her hands once she realized that he was not going to try and stop her from doing so, "I thought you were the one in charge."

"I am."

"So why don't you just tell her to stop or something?"

Naruto turned his head towards the happily smiling Yoruichi, as if she knew what he was going to say and seemed okay with his coming answer, "I could tell her to stop if it really bothered me, but if it's not important she won't listen to me anyway."

"How important?"

"'People dying' important."

"And you're okay with that?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" Naruto asked with a curious expression on his face, one that was shared by Yoruichi as she had his cheek stretched out, "She does great work, she listens to me when I actually order her to do stuff, and most of the things I know about the afterlife I know from her. If it wasn't for her I wouldn't even know anything about the Seireitei and probably would have done something involving Hollows or plus souls in general to get your attention by now, and not in the good way."

He could only imagine… he thought the Gedou was a separate plane to store things like items or people he wanted to protect (and it was, it just wasn't that simple). If he had taken it upon himself to try and navigate or protect souls the way he found out that Shinigami did he might have ended up throwing hundreds or maybe thousands of them right into Hueco Mundo.

That would have been awkward to explain when the Shinigami eventually confronted him on it. Once again, thank goodness Yoruichi found him that day that Hollows attacked Karakura Town by the droves or his little series of experiments with the Rinnegan abilities could have taken a sour turn after that encounter.

"Well there's nothing wrong with that." Rukia said earnestly, not very surprised since quite a few Gotei 13 captains and seated officers had a similar laissez-faire way of handling things amongst their ranks, her squad included. As long as things got done it didn't matter how they went about doing it.

At that moment, Yoruichi's eyes seemed to harder slightly at the feeling of a familiar power in the distance, "Naruto… I think Gaara is fighting. His energy spiked the way it does whenever he fights in the training room."

"I just called him and he said he'd tell me if something was going on." Naruto said, palming his forehead hard, "Fine I guess we'll have to talk to these guys later. Hopefully the Mod Souls felt the Bount that he should be fighting but either way could you go ahead and call-?"

Before he could finish his statement, a familiar Reiatsu that hadn't been felt in quite some time by those that were aware of the source fell over the entire building and stopped Naruto, Yoruichi, and Rukia cold, with the petite Shinigami speaking up first on the subject, "Was that just-?"

"I think it was." Naruto had a massive grin on his face because an assumption that had been made by the hastily conceived 'braintrust' had actually been correct, "Forget calling Chad or Ichigo, I'd rather-."

"-I'll go get him and tell him to leave right now. He's probably eager to jump right back into the mix of things anyway." Yoruichi said, hopping up out of Naruto's lap and walking to the door to go fetch the person she already knew he was alluding to.

As the door to the office shut behind her, Naruto looked back at the group of Shinigami in his office with a victorious face as he leaned back in his chair, "See? Yoruichi-chan does things for me, and I usually don't even have to say anything to get her to do it. It's like she's in my head sometimes."

XxX

(Gaara vs. Hou and Ban)

Another rush of water sent at the stationary Gaara did nothing against the bulky wall of sand Gaara formed between himself and the liquid, and apparently they couldn't generate enough force with their water to bust through the wall.

As the attack subsided, Gaara shifted the wet sand that had been the front of his wall towards the back for his dryer sand and waved his hand in a side-to-side pattern, "Rendan: Suna Shigure (Successive Shots: Sand Drizzle)!" The sand fired off multiple sand projectiles at Hou and Ban, forcing them to duck behind the trees in the park where they were battling.

"We can't reach him." Hou said as the sounds of the sand thudding off of the trees echoed out, "What do we do now?"

Ban narrowed his eyes as he tried to peer at Gaara and had to duck his head back behind the trunk as a shot of sand stripped the bark off of it, "If he is able to handle the amount of water we have now… then we simply have to get more, don't we?"

"Sabaku Sousou (Sand Waterfall Funeral)!"

The sand that Gaara had used to fire at Hou and Ban stuck to the trunks of the trees and allowed Gaara to crush the wood with his sand to get rid of their cover. Hou and Ban ran away as fast as the two youthful looking Bounts could once they saw the pressure that Gaara's sand could squeeze with.

Gaara's sand was in pursuit of them and would have quickly captured them had the water dolls Guhl and Günther not utterly drenched every grain coming to the defense of their Bount masters.

An annoyed grunt from Gaara followed as he called his sand back close to himself and moved to catch the two brothers, something he did in a matter of moments, finding them right back where the battle had more or less begun, at the fountain. And the fact that they had seemed to stop running didn't give him any reason to relax in his mind.

"The thing about our dolls are…" Hou started to say.

"That they can control any water, any body of water they come into contact with." Ban finished with a smirk.

Gaara sent his sand at the unprotected pair but a rumbling underneath his feet gave way to the ground actually cracking and water from underground began swiftly and heavily bubbling up over the pavement, flooding the ground. Gaara switched his sand from attacking to taking him off of the ground and into the air to avoid the water that seemed to be trying to grab him.

"Maybe you're the one that should think about surrendering and leaving." Ban said as he and his brother started amassing more and more water to rise up from the ground to try and reach Gaara out of the air. The water took on a large glob-like form that seemed to be several stories high. The attacking Bounts grinned as parts of the creature stretched up towards Gaara to snatch him out of the sky.

"You think this is all the sand I have under my control?"

"Huh?" Hou said, hearing how unconcerned Gaara seemed to be at facing down the massive water creature.

"I said…" The hands of Gaara slowly raised into the air as if he were trying to lift something that was unseen and heavy due to the speed at which he was drawing his arms up, "Do you really think that this is all the sand that I have under my control?"

Both Hou and Ban started looking around as they heard a low rumbling coming from around them. They then caught sight of sand moving around the trees surrounding the cracked pavement and fountain. Waves and waves of sand, and they jumped into the fountain to avoid the rush of the grains, "How can you possibly get all of this sand?" Hou shouted in alarm, "We can control tons of water with Guhl and Günther, but we need an existing source like the water in the pipes leading through this fountain! There's no amount of sand like this anywhere in Karakura Town!"

"I can send my sand into the ground and grind up the minerals to make more. As long as I have even a small amount of my sand I can always make more anywhere I go, as much as I need." Gaara said informatively as his sand began to swirl past the fountain and bashed into Guhl and Günther, the blunt force of the sand tearing the glob of water into segments. With the immediate threat to himself handled, Gaara turned his sand onto the twins as it began to engulf the entire fountain in a wide-open trapping ball, "Sabaku Rou (Sand Binding Prison)!"

The twins were not nearly fleet-footed enough to escape being trapped, but their dolls were not as slow as they were and sprang to Hou and Ban's defense. Before Gaara's jutsu finished closing the two dolls blocked the opening with a forceful torrent of whipping water, long enough for both boys to burst free through said water and avoid capture as they seemed to surf out as far away from the sand trap on the water that comprised their dolls' effective forms.

Trying to trap those two without killing them was turning out to be a pain in Gaara's ass. And apparently they had forgotten that Gaara had explicitly told them that he was going to capture and interrogate them, because upon escaping they looked as if they had survived Gaara's best shot.

Putting distance between themselves and Gaara's failed attempt to capture them, Ban smirked at the red-haired Arrancar, "Well that didn't work. Is that the best you've got?"

"No." Gaara said plainly, "I just told you that I'm going to take you alive. An opportunity to catch a Bount and extract information from you on your activities is something that I cannot pass up… even if it would be exceedingly easier."

He was clearly the best equipped to do so out of Equilibrium. Naruto and Hidan weren't the capturing type, more used to obliterating their targets. The same went for Ichigo and Chad. Tatsuki would have probably been defeated by the pair by now, Yoruichi didn't fight unless she felt like it, Urahara and his workers didn't fight unless there was something the man himself wanted to observe, and Orihime didn't really choose to fight period.

But Hou and Ban took offense to how calm Gaara still was. He seemed to be as cool as a cucumber. Not a single offensive move they had attempted from the outset of the battle managed to take that same monotone expression off of his face.

"You think you can beat us so easily that capture is an option!" Both Ban and Hou said simultaneously as more and more water started to be pulled out of the fountain, to the point where the spigot the water came from shattered completely and water flew out by the gallon.

Gaara let out a sigh and prepared to continue fighting until a power he had never felt settled over his senses. It had a familiar signature to it, but it was magnified by thousands of times when compared to what he was used to, "Is that-?" He asked himself before a small smile placed itself on his face, "So she was able to fix him after all… you're quite impatient aren't you Ishida-san?"

As if Gaara's words summoned him out into the open, Uryuu strode out of the tree line from behind Gaara and stood next to him with a confident look on his face, "I hope I'm not interrupting your battle with these two." He held out his left arm, letting his Quincy Cross dangle from the chain he had around his wrist, "Do you mind if I step in and fight instead? It's been quite a while and I want to see if Inoue's work was as good as it felt after she finished healing me."

All Gaara did was step back out of Uryuu's way. If it came down to it and he was rusty he could always step back in and finish the fight in his place. So long as the objective was achieved he didn't care. Let Uryuu stretch his legs.

"Well if it isn't the powerless Quincy?" Ban said in amusement of Uryuu's presence, "And it looks like he's got a little of his bite back."

"But he's still too weak to be anything more than a liability to the stronger one brother." Hou said in response, "Let's defeat him quickly and get back to the troublesome one with the sand."

"Why do that when we can take them both at once?"

"Good point."

The water dolls Guhl and Günther rushed at both Uryuu and Gaara with their monstrous forms fueled by the water that was still draining from the burst fountain. Uryuu did not move, he merely formed his blue energy Quincy Bow before it took its more elaborate shape that he had used in the Soul Society. A grin came to his face at the feeling of doing such a thing in battle once again after not being able to do so for months, and it appeared that he didn't have to start over from scratch even without the Sanrei Glove.

Taking aim with his bow, Uryuu fired only two shots, and they weren't directed at Hou or Ban. The shots passed through Guhl and Günther and hit two very small targets within the bodies of water. Two targets that once hit forced all of the water comprising the two dolls to fall uselessly to the ground.

Both Hou and Ban's eyes widened in complete shock and horror at what Uryuu had done, "No! Do you know what you've just done?" They both asked as Gaara didn't miss his opening and used his sand to capture the now defenseless Bount twins.

Uryuu let his bow vanish and adjusted his glasses on his face, "I watched some of your fight with Gaara. When he did damage to your water doll the water always reformed to a certain smaller spots. At a closer look once I stepped in myself, I was able to see that the two particular spots had a bottlecap at the center each. A small target that many wouldn't notice, but for a Quincy archer it's all that one of us would need."

Man it felt good to talk down to an opponent he had just pulled a massive advantage over! He didn't think he'd missed it that much.

"No!"

The ongoing session of Uryuu patting himself on the back for such a commanding victory came to an end when both Hou and Ban began turning to dust much like Ryo had after Tatsuki had smashed him into pulp with the Rasengan, "What's happening?" Uryuu asked. He hadn't shot Hou or Ban and Gaara was not using his sand to crush them, only to capture them. In a matter of seconds their best efforts to struggle did nothing as they finished turning to dust. Gaara's sand released them to allow their ashen remains to fall onto the ground, "I didn't do anything to kill them."

Gaara walked over to the dust that used to comprise Hou and Ban and kneeled down to observe it before looking at where the dolls Guhl and Günther fell apart. A frown crossed his face as he stood back up, "You didn't, but you destroyed their dolls. The bond between Bount and doll must be incredibly close for them to die because you destroyed them." It made a semblance of sense though. All of the Bounts' combat oriented abilities lay with their dolls, so destroying them had to do something catastrophic. Still though… this wasn't as much of a victory as Gaara had originally hoped for.

Thus he felt he was completely in the right when he formed a large hand made out of sand to slap Uryuu and send him sprawling across the ground. Uryuu jumped back up, spitting out grains of sand and glaring at Gaara, "What possible reason would you have had for that?"

"I was trying to capture those two, not kill them." Gaara said with his arms crossed as his sand filtered back into his gourd and his cork closed it off, "If I had been trying to kill them my battle-style would have been far more offensive."

"Well it wasn't as if I tried to kill them either!" Uryuu defended, temporarily losing his cool at Gaara's expense before regaining composure and thinking about the waste that had just occurred. So much could have been gained from catching Hou and Ban, "Damn it."

It was accidental, that much was clear. But now they at least had another way of destroying a Bount, by getting rid of their dolls. That was something.

XxX

(Meanwhile – Mother Base)

"Goodness." Yoruichi said as she lay Orihime's tired, unconscious body down on a bed in one of the rooms set aside for other potential members of Equilibrium in the future, "How much power did you use fixing up Uryuu?" The question of course could not be answered, but that didn't stop Yoruichi from asking.

When Yoruichi went to locate Uryuu and see if he was in appropriate shape to go and find Gaara in case he needed assistance Orihime was barely able to keep her eyes open and then proceeded to collapse upon Uryuu's leaving of the room. Stubborn girl, she was not going to let her own exhaustion rain down on Uryuu's parade of getting his combat capabilities back.

Still, there was something to be said about that kind of determination to keep working well past her own limits. When she had tried training Orihime to develop her abilities before the first trip to the Soul Society she had not expected her to get so good at the healing aspect of her powers. Talk about exceeding expectations… fixing people that were split clean in half and restoring lost abilities.

Doing nothing for hours but sitting and healing Uryuu after identifying the damaged parts of his energy circulation, Orihime had more than earned her rest and would be given it for as long as she needed it.

Yoruichi left the room, stopping at the door before shaking her head at Orihime with a fond smile on her face, "It's scary. You don't even know how powerful you really are Orihime." She said before flipping off the light and shutting the door.

XxX

(With Hidan)

Sick of sitting around and waiting for something to happen, especially since whenever anything did indeed go down Hidan was too far away to get personally involved, the silver-haired Arrancar in disguise decided to take an active approach and hit the streets looking for anything he could find.

He wasn't expecting any Bount to actively seek him out, because in his mind such a thing would be tantamount to suicide for the fools, but just any kind of information that was off-kilter that he could dredge up would have been wonderful.

Thus for the entire day he had been traipsing around Karakura Town, sticking to the back alleys and trying to get whatever useful information he could about any strange or unnatural things going on, maybe an urban legend or two. Even if there was no inkling of something to lead him to the Bounts there was always a chance that it would lead to something else worthwhile to take up for work later.

A lanky-looking guy with slicked back silver hair and wearing black clothes that would have looked right in place at a metal concert that came strolling up to the street toughs requesting (demanding) information on random subjects didn't get said street toughs to take kindly to such a happening.

And this was the part that Hidan thoroughly relished; because it was downright enjoyable for him to walk around all day doing nothing but getting into random street fights with regular humans… especially when one of them would do something like pull a knife on him. Once they stabbed him the looks on their faces were priceless right before he would proceed to break their jaws among other body parts. He might have killed a few of them in hindsight, but they should have just told him what he wanted to know.

And it wasn't like he'd get in trouble, right? Uzumaki couldn't hold it against him for defending himself (Ha! Defending himself…), and they were lowlifes regardless.

But he managed to beat some interesting rumors out of a few guys that remained conscious after his complete and total gangland thrashings.

He was given the location of a few creepy places in town that bore no suspicious fruit, but there was one that was currently looking to be gearing up as a homerun. He managed to stomp the piss out of one person that told him the location of the richest person in Karakura Town. At first Hidan didn't want to hear any of that crap because he already knew the richest man in Karakura Town and where he lived, but when it wasn't revealed to be the industrial district he then realized that Uzumaki hadn't bought anything or done anything public that someone would have been able to track other than buying the large, but abandoned office facility that was their base.

So the information led him to a location where there was apparently someone incredibly rich that had never been seen to rob or steal from for any of the thugs he had been talking to. A gated off beautiful piece of large forested property.

With this place being found, Hidan planned to investigate it much like any other place he figured there might be a Bount or something, willing to put his very rusty ninja skills to the test since unlike the other places this mansion was inhabited by someone.

Hidan jumped right over the gate and cracked his neck upon landing, 'When was the last fucking time I had to sneak into… anywhere?' Hidan thought to himself as he skulked through the trees in the dead of night, 'Man I don't think I even did any shit like this back when I was actually a ninja.'

His trip into the potentially hostile territory was cut short when he felt a sword drive through his body from behind. Hidan's gaze turned down to see the length of a katana sticking out of his chest, "Hmm… I wonder how this got here." He said calmly, touching the tip of the blade that was coated in his own blood before craning his neck behind him to see nothing there, "I always did suck at sensing an enemy's presence, but this is ridiculous."

With the sword still buried through his chest, Hidan pulled out a sealing scroll and scraped some of the blood from his stab wound across it to unseal what used to be his old triple-bladed scythe in life, only now it the blades on it replaced and it was no longer attached to his body by the cable that it used to have at the end of it.

Hidan spun the scythe in his hand before making a move to turn and swing at whoever had stabbed him from behind. However with a wet 'squelch' noise the sword was pulled out and Hidan's attack missed. Ignoring the bleeding hole in his chest, Hidan's eyes scanned about for any sign of his attacker but slashes started appearing all over his body.

Each and every strike elicited a grunt from Hidan, but a grin started slowly creeping upon his features as blood began to pour from him, "You obviously have no idea who you're dealing with if you think I'm that easy to kill." He lashed out in a seemingly random direction only for a clang to sound out as his enemy came into sight and blocked with his sword, "I didn't even get to pray before our little battle… that really pisses me off!"

A follow-up swing from Hidan missed as his opponent used Shunpo to evade the attack. The attacker was a dark-haired Shinigami wearing a sleeveless uniform that seemed further modified from what Hidan had been conditioned to expect.

"A Shinigami." Hidan said, expressing interest in the fight, "I haven't tangled with one of them for real before. A shame I made a promise to stay in my Gigai or we could have some serious fun with this battle."

The Shinigami in combat with Hidan held his sword up, prepared for Hidan to attack him, "So your group discovered this place? I don't know how you did, but you're going to die here."

A series of barking laughs ripped from Hidan's throat at the man's declaration, "Well the thing is, when you stay out of sight you'd better make sure there's nothing extraordinary about you, like the extraordinary amounts of cash you have to be keeping to afford a place like this. I mean Uzumaki is rich, but you'd never know it because he doesn't waste money on mansions. And you think you can kill me? Go ahead and try!"

With that, Hidan rushed forward at the Shinigami, wildly swinging his scythe without any kind of rhyme or reason. To the credit of the enemy, he stayed queued up with Hidan all the way, trading strikes with their respective weapons and ignoring Hidan's raving grunts and unnerving shrieks as the melee continued.

The two clashed weapons and pushed off, giving some distance once again as the Shinigami addressed Hidan, "Where are your partners? Elsewhere on the grounds?"

"Wouldn't you love to know?" Hidan taunted before attacking again, dragging the blades of the scythe through the ground before trying and upward swipe that the Shinigami had to lean back out of the way to dodge. He returned fire by delivering a kick to Hidan's exposed side, but Hidan lowered his arm, blocking with his forearm and elbow, "A Shinigami being a bitch to the Bounts. I'm sure there's something funny about that somewhere!"

"Don't speak about concerns you know nothing about!" The outburst quickly settled back down to a seething loathing of the silver-haired berserker as he scrutinized Hidan's bloody appearance, "…You remind me of that person."

"And you remind me of… something." Hidan retorted lamely, "What's your name Bount-bitch?"

"Ichinose Maki." He didn't feel anything other than an intense dislike for a bloodthirsty butcher like Hidan, but it didn't matter at that time. He wasn't the actual person that he wished he could defeat and destroy, Hidan was just cut from a similar mold, "You're a very durable foe, but you're not very polished with your blade-work."

"Blah, blah, blah… Let's just fight already!" Hidan shouted again as he rushed at Maki.

Instead of preparing for another exchange of sword strikes, Maki held out his sword and spoke again, "Kouka Hirameke, Nijigasumi (Shine Brightly, Rainbow Mist)!"

The vision of Hidan was immediately assaulted with a rush of bright light that blinded him immensely. Lashing out with a swing of his scythe was not the advised course of action, because after he did so he found his arm cut off at the elbow.

Blood squirted from Hidan's stump of an arm as he growled and cursed in pain, "You son-of-a-bitch!" As his vision returned he was unable to even see Maki any longer, something that set him off even more, "Gah! Goddamn it! You're dead do you hear me!"

"No. You're dead. There's no more reason to fight you. With a wound like that you'll bleed out in a matter of moments and that will be that. You should never have come here."

After speaking his peace, Maki's presence disappeared from Hidan's limited senses again. Hidan grit his teeth angrily and picked his severed arm up off of the ground. Did he really think that he would just bleed out and die that easily? What kind of bullshit was that?

It was insulting, and it was an insult that Hidan was _not_ going to take lying down.

Plucking the severed arm still gripping the scythe off of the scythe so that he could carry it in his hand that was still intact, Hidan spared one more look around the forest before heading back to the gate the way he had come in, "I'll be back Bount-bitch… and I'll guarantee you that by the end of all of this I'll be eating my cereal out of the back of your skull. And I hope you heard that."

He'd be definitely petitioning Uzumaki to leave his Gigai the next time. His Gigai was too spongy, fragile, and susceptible to fight-ending damage even if he couldn't die, and Kakuzu wasn't around to stitch him back together if he lost a limb. If he could come at that weak bastard as an Arrancar the fight wouldn't last five minutes though and he knew it.

XxX

(Bount Mansion – Common Room)

"Tch." Cain said as he felt Maki's presence reentering the mansion again, "Send the loyal guard dog out to patrol the premises, eh Kariya?" He uttered as he pulled his fedora down to shade his eyes.

Kariya didn't respond to Cain's crack at Maki as there was no reason to do so. It was the way Cain was these days, a mouthy and brash man that was strong enough to deal with the consequences for his attitude… consequences that he hadn't had to face for over a century.

On the other hand there were others in the room aside from Kariya and Cain. A professional looking man with combed black hair, large glasses, a white button-up shirt with a red tie, and black slacks sat in a wooden chair on a far wall at a desk.

A young looking man wearing white shorts with black trim, and a sleeveless white shirt with a high collar and black trim, with light orange short hair that had one spiky bang hanging over his right eye leaned against the wall by the door.

An old man with grey hair wearing a black suit and a purple ascot around his neck sat in a cushy armchair.

A large, muscular man with short red hair, a beard, and an orange Mohawk sat in a couch wearing a grey tank-top and black pants with large headphones around his neck.

On the arm of the same couch there was a woman with long dark green hair wearing a purple Chinese-style qipao and beige pants.

Out of the lot of them, only the man leaning against the wall by the door and the woman sitting on the arm of the couch spared a glance to glare momentarily at Cain. He was such a pain to have around, and no one could check that attitude of his because of how powerful he was.

"I really wish sometimes you'd know when no one wants to hear your shit Cain." The green-haired woman said, getting a smirk out of Cain that got a scoff out of her.

"Oh come on Yoshi." Cain started up once again, "Just because at Mabashi's throat right now-." He gestured over to the young looking man leaning against the wall, "-That doesn't mean that I'm the next best thing to pick a fight with."

The muscular man in the couch kept Yoshi from trying to stand up and go into further detail on the matter before addressing Cain, "You should know by now not to intentionally try to come to blows with your Bount brethren. Both of you." He said, making sure Yoshi got the picture as well before she ripped her arm out of his grasp.

Cain was able to feign an apologetic look at the man, "Sorry Master Koga, I'm just a little stir crazy being cooped up in this mansion so much. I mean, we can't all just run off as we please the way Yoshino does."

"The twins are dead…" The young man against the wall, Mabashi said before flipping his bang back, uselessly because it merely descended back over his eye, "Stupid brats should have done more legwork before picking a fight with the first straggler they came across."

Yoshi turned towards Mabashi and spoke up, "And you think you can do better than them? You'll probably drop dead the second you fight a single Shinigami."

"Oh shut up you old hag." Mabashi responded in order to get under Yoshi's skin, "What would you know about anything to do with fighting. You might as well be like Ugaki for as much as you suck with your powers." He said, gesturing his head towards the bespectacled man sitting at the desk.

Taking offense to being slighted at her abilities, this time Koga didn't even try to stop Yoshi as she jumped up looking ready to fight, "I'll cut you down in a heartbeat and show you just why you're the weakest link in the room you piece of-."

"I'm tired of hearing you bicker." The old man in the armchair said cantankerously, "Are we here for a reason or is it just to listen to these idiots all take jabs at each other?" He asked Kariya.

There was no sign of Kariya having taken any offense to his subordinates and their actions, "I wish you were all more patient like Koga." He said with a chuckle, "But we've finally identified our Quincy. Now all we need to do is merely take him for ourselves. His powers have conveniently been restored for our benefit. And this is where you will all come in… even Yoshino."

The man with glasses, Ugaki, spun around in his chair at his desk to face all of the other Bounts, "We can't waste any time with this next move. They know where we are now and we know that they're willing to react to us. So we just have to create a scenario that they all have to adjust accordingly to."

"Finally!" Cain exclaimed in a boisterous manner before more and more lunacy seemed to seep into his voice, "I'm gonna track Uzumaki down and I'm gonna tear him apart. Make a fool out of me and Waineton will he? I'll-!"

"Cain!" Koga exclaimed with an authoritative voice, "Control! I didn't teach you to be impulsive and fly off the handle, now settle down!"

Hearing Koga's order, Cain shifted a glare to him that didn't even last for a second before he lowered his head, "Sorry Master Koga. It's just that you know already what I'm willing to do to that bastard." His fists shook at his side merely thinking of his stupid grinning face with those absurd facial markings, 'I'll carve some scars into those stupid marks of his with my bare hands…'

With an air of normality settling over the room, Kariya nodded his gratitude to Koga, "Thank you Gou." He said, using the man's given name in a show of familiarity, "As I was saying, you will each have your parts to play to isolate our Quincy friend and further our plans. Each of you should be prepared for battle… even you Sawatari." He said to the old man who merely grunted in response, "This is all I wished to say."

With that, Mabashi walked towards the door and opened it to leave, the other Bounts slowly filtering their way out of the room as well, even Sawatari at a reserved pace leaving Kariya and Ugaki alone in the room.

"How are you going to utilize the special ability of our most unique Bount tomorrow?" Ugaki asked Kariya curiously, "You're not really willing to let her fight and possibly wind up lost are you?"

Kariya shook his head and walked over to the man, setting a hand on his shoulder, "Our dear Yoshino… she'll do exactly what I need her to do in one way or the other tomorrow even if she does end up fighting. Best case scenario we take down two birds with one stone. Either way her use will come to fruition. There's nothing to worry about."

Ugaki smirked as he turned back around in his chair back towards the desk, "Oh I was never concerned. I was just ensuring that our fearless leader had his priorities straightened out for tomorrow if everyone is to engage in battle."

"How charming of you." Kariya said with a slight laugh as he left the room himself, "Like I said, there's nothing to worry about. We are far too close now to fail so easily and there are only so many ways the enemy can react to our presence. They can't see everything and in the end they still know nothing."

* * *

Omake: Jacks of All Trades

"What do you mean cover jobs?" Ichigo asked irritably as he, Chad, Uryuu, Orihime, and Tatsuki sat in the dining area while Naruto and Yoruichi stood to speak to them.

Naruto rolled his eyes and decided to explain, "Do you think that all we're going to be doing is looking for Hollows and supernatural stuff? No. There's no real world income for that and I'm not paying you straight out of my own pocket with my own hard earned book sales and personal merc work forever without getting some kind of return. At some point once we finish working out how we're going to handle all of this you're going to be doing odd jobs and mercenary work."

Chad didn't know exactly what 'mercenary work' entailed, this he felt the need to ask, "Like what exactly?"

Lifting her hand to begin counting things off on her fingers, Yoruichi proceeded to state what could be considered possible jobs, "Let's see… distance transportation of sundry goods and items, bounty hunting, bodyguards, black ops military crap for both potentially the Seireitei and the living world's governments, physical manual labor, stand-in work for certain groups that need a substitute of some sort… all kinds of things really. We could wind up doing next to anything."

"I'm not killing anyone for money." Chad said resolutely with absolutely no room for argument. No one else said so, but everybody felt pretty much the exact same. They weren't going to just go and end someone's life for no reason other than being paid to do so.

Naruto and Yoruichi looked at each other before turning back to Chad with Yoruichi again addressing him, "We weren't going to make any of you kill anyone. As a matter of fact we'll be screening requests and we won't accept any that we don't want to take. And depending on your skill-set certain jobs will be recommended for you. Then there's the fact that you can get your own jobs if you really wanted to." Besides… if an assassination that they felt like accepting really came up that was what Hidan was for. Orihime raised her hand as if they were in school and Yoruichi pointed at her, "Yes, Orihime."

Orihime let her hand fall before asking her question, "So we can be astronauts?" Tatsuki without missing a beat palmed her forehead hard at her best friend's query while the other boys looked at her as if she were insane. They should have been used to it by then in all honesty.

In return, Yoruichi gave her a dry look while Naruto had one of complete amusement on his face, watching Yoruichi try to make a case, "Um… well in theory I guess you could be an astronaut for one of your possible jobs."

"That's right Orihime-chan, reach for the stars!"

Ignoring her sensei Naruto's outburst of encouragement as Orihime's eyes seemed to shine over with the possible career opportunities running through her head, Tatsuki decided to be the more proactive of the youngsters in the room, "So… if I became a professional fighter or something along those lines?"

"Now that's a great side job." Yoruichi explained with a smile seeing that someone was getting the point, "And with a job like that we would be your managers… and you would give us twenty-five percent of what you made."

"Twenty-five percent?" Tatsuki bristled at hearing how much of her future potential fight purses she would have to part with if she were to take such a career path, "What the hell kind of managers would you be?"

"The managers that trained you, provided you with a facility, gave you sparring partners, transportation of any kind, a free place to stay if any of you wanted to live here…" Naruto said, listing reasons with a completely straight face, "Managers like that."

Point taken, Tatsuki's face fell and her fire to dispute such a loss of money faded out, "Okay… well when you put it that way nevermind." She said sheepishly.

Uryuu was the next to ask a question, "What about if we want to go to college?" Ichigo stuck his tongue out at the thought. He wasn't particularly the type to want to shoot for more education even though his grades were pretty good.

"Go to college if you want to." Naruto said, picking his ear absently, "We're still going to bug you with work."

A chuckle came from Yoruichi as she crossed her arms over her chest, "Definitely, because we're probably going to be the ones putting you through college anyway."

That sounded good enough to Uryuu. He'd probably get bored in college if he didn't get to do some ridiculous, crazy supernatural job or mission now that he had been doing so for as long as he had been. Still, he had one more concern, "Do we get health insurance or dental?" He asked, adjusting his glasses on his face as if he had asked an important, make or break question.

Everyone in the room, Orihime included, just gave him a deadpan stare that eventually made Uryuu feel self-conscious about asking in the first place.

As time dragged on Naruto eventually came up with an appropriate sarcastic response to such a question, "Yes, you get health insurance and dental for working here. Our health plan goes by the name of Shun Shun Rikka and our physician of choice is Inoue Orihime-chan." He said, pointing to the resident healer, "…Trying to be a smartass and everything…"

"Yeah Ishida, way to ruin the assembly." Ichigo followed up grumpily, putting the storm cloud over Uryuu's head further.

* * *

**What a weekend dude. I wish I could talk about some of the things I've seen, but it's a part of my code to keep certain secrets for the benefits of my friends… and I'm dying to speak on some of this stuff… most of it involving Jack Daniels and marijuana (I did not personally imbibe in either. I like keeping my full senses.), but I can't do so in good conscience. I will say that one incident involved a used pair of Nike Shox that had just switched owners, a mini-trampoline, a basketball hoop, a four-door sedan, and a lot of bandages.**

**I would say that it was redneck activity, but that would be very unfair because three of the seven people involved were black and one of the ingredients of the incident was basketball.**

**Sadly it did not involve a video camera or even a camera phone… because it was too dark.**

**Either way that is neither here nor there. Chapter complete, and I hope you enjoyed.**

**Kenchi out.**


	23. Full Court Press

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. At some point in my life I want to own a racehorse or two, so that I can legally name them the most retarded names that could possibly be conceived. I saw a racehorse named Game On Dude… Game On Dude… and there was another one named Stay Thirsty. That shit was hilarious and I so desperately wanted one of those horses to win, but Game On Dude came in second. Now as great as that was, I can come up with something way better than that. I know I can.

**Chapter 23: Full Court Press**

* * *

As the sun rose and many Karakura Town were still asleep, at least one man was not as Hidan irritably sat on a bench in Urahara's lab within his shop, eye twitching as little Nel looked up at him and the stump that used to be his arm. Eventually he had enough of being gawked at by the little girl, "What is it?" He grit out between gnashing his teeth.

"What happened to yer arm?"

"Wolves." Hidan replied glibly, "That's what I get for sleeping outside." He said, blatantly lying without remorse to the young Arrancar. There was no way he was going to say he got his arm cut off out loud if he didn't have to.

"Wolfs?" Nel repeated questioningly in her own way, tilting her head to the side to fit her tone. She had taken a shine to wearing Urahara's bucket hat on top of her head and said hat was tilting dangerously to the point of sinking over her eyes until she grabbed it and readjusted it, "Why are you playin' with wolfies Hidan?"

"Nel!"

Both Dondochakka and Pesche ran into the room and scooped up the little Arrancar before she wound up bothering Hidan into reacting in some kind of violent fashion given his nature, "Sorry about that Hidan! We'll get her out of your way for you!" Pesche said, cowing to the scary scowl on the silver-haired man's face.

"Yeah, Urahara-san will be just a minute don'cha know!" Dondochakka followed up before both of them sped out of the room with Nel.

"Hey! Wait you guys! Nel wants to talk to Hidan sum'more!"

As the rapid sounds of fleeing footsteps vanished, Urahara, sans hat, popped his head into the lab, "Hello, hello!" Hidan merely growled at the jovial Shinigami-scientist as he ambled in with Tessai in tow, "Wow, I don't think I've seen anyone or anything mess up a Gigai like this and remain alive. That's pretty interesting."

"What was done to my soul by the great Jashin-sama causes flesh and blood bodies that I inhabit to be immortal." Hidan said as if he were repeating himself for the thousandth time, "What part of this do you people not understand? Fucking Uzumaki-brat understood the first time I explained, what's your problem?"

"I like hearing you get mad when you explain it." Urahara replied with a huge grin, delighting in the killing intent pouring off of Hidan, "Now let's see if we can't fix you up. Tessai."

At that moment Tessai grabbed Hidan and held him down much to his chagrin and surprise. Especially since the large braided man's face was uncomfortably close to his own, "Um… what are you guys doing and why should I not be killing you right now?"

"We need to fix your Gigai." Tessai said casually, though still not moving from pinning Hidan to the ground, "It's simply standard procedure Hidan-san."

"I don't like standard procedure." Hidan said, a little fearful at his complete inability to move with a 300 pound man on top of him, "I think I'll just wait for the Orihime girl to get to Mother Base after school and let her fix it."

"It could get infected Hidan-san." Tessai said with a gleam coming off of his glasses.

"I can't die in this body! I'll deal with it!"

"Now, now Hidan." Urahara said as he looked over his myriad of equipment that varied in its uses, "There's no need for any of that. As long as we hold you down we can fix your Gigai up, good as new."

"Then let me out of the Gigai! Problem solved right there!"

"Your Reiatsu would gain the attention of the Shinigami stationed here and as far as we know you don't have permission to leave your body do you?" Despite asking, Urahara already knew or else Hidan wouldn't have gotten his arm cut off in the first place… and even if it would have wound up happening anyway he would have had a grin on his face because arm or not he would have killed someone, "And you don't have the money to afford a new Gigai of that quality. It's a masterpiece. So please bear with us. You like pain anyway, right?"

"When I'm inflicting it on others damn you!"

XxX

(Mother Base)

Naruto was rather torn. On one hand Yoruichi wasn't pestering him to go to school the way she had been recently, probably because of the Shinigami observation team being there, although on the other hand… the Shinigami observation team was there.

And they were observing him.

More specifically, one person was observing him.

"Are you sure you wouldn't rather follow someone… fun? Like Urahara. I'm sure he'd have you pulling your hair out if you went to see him." Naruto said, walking through the halls with a mug of coffee and testing a new product he was going to try putting out in the market soon; an orange t-shirt with the words 'RAMEN FUELED' on the front in English and a line-drawn steaming bowl on the back, all in black.

Hey, he'd buy it. And there were stupider shirts in the world that sold well. He'd seen them. Sometimes the stupider the better.

Shuuhei shook his head, "I'm supposed to be checking out the administration part of your group. Well you're the only boss-level person aside from Shihouin Yoruichi, and I spent all of yesterday observing her. You're next today."

Naruto let out a grunt to let him know he was willing to deal with the situation and would accept him merely doing his job, "Okay, but it's going to be boring today. All I'm going to do is sit on the roof and wait for a sign of something while my clones do legal paperwork and other crap." He then felt a slight chill go down his spine, "Ugh."

"What's the matter?" Shuuhei asked, wondering why Naruto stopped mid-stride and shook slightly, "You alright?"

"Yeah, fine." Naruto took a sip of his coffee and cracked his neck to the side audibly, "I just felt something off… and not a Bount. I think."

XxX

(Karakura High School – Later That Morning)

"Tatsuki why are your lips all singed?"

Could she go an hour without someone asking her that damn question? And now it was the teacher doing it. Tatsuki scowled deeply and wished that she hadn't been trying to shoot fireballs all night during training. At least training the Rasengan didn't hurt, "I burned myself with some coffee this morning Ochi-sensei. I'm fine."

Ichigo shook his head at Tatsuki as she tried to ignore the pain in her lips and continued taking notes. The orange-haired Shinigami turned in his seat towards Gaara who was sitting stoically and writing notes as well. For some reason unlike Naruto he took school seriously enough to show up even though both of them were in the same boat for the most part, 'And he and Ishida fought a Bount last night as well.' He couldn't help but slip a grin onto his face as he looked over at Uryuu who seemed to have much more energy that morning, as if he were inspired just to be awake that day.

Orihime may have been too tired to come to school after all the effort she put into restoring Uryuu's powers, but as far and Ichigo and more than likely Uryuu went she had more than earned the rest she was getting at Mother Base.

Uryuu felt his stare and looked over at Ichigo momentarily, seeing his grin and managing a small smile of his own before pretending to ignore Ichigo and getting back to his taking notes.

It was weird though for Rukia to be back, even if it was for this mission, mostly because she had inserted herself back into the class with the use of her little memory device. Those notes that Rukia were taking were not for the class, they were on him. And he could only imagine how boring of a read that would be.

"Ichigo!"

Upon hearing a low, quiet whispered shout of his name Ichigo looked around and saw none of his friends trying to get his attention. He then felt a tug on his pant leg and looked down to see Ririn in the little bird plushie yanking on his leg, "Hey, what's the matter?" He whispered back, trying not to get into any trouble.

"A Bount!" Ririn whispered heatedly, "Really, really close!"

Hearing that, Ichigo jumped to his feet all rigid and stiff, "Ochi-sensei, I need to go to the bathroom!" He said with a little more urgency than necessary as all eyes in the room were locked on him due to the awkward outburst.

The teacher put her hands on her hips with a frown on her face as she stared down the Substitute-Shinigami, "Ichigo you just got back from lunch barely ten minutes ago. You could have used the bathroom back then before class started back up. Just wait until this period is over could you?"

'Not really.' Ichigo thought to himself as he was still standing up trying to think of a decent half-assed excuse to use in order to leave.

Finally getting what all of Ichigo's bullshit excuses to leave the class before last summer were all about, Tatsuki wondered how in the world he ever got away with any of that crap, 'You owe me for this Ichigo…' Tatsuki said, discreetly making hand-seals under her desk before taking a deep breath and dreading what was about to happen next, 'Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu (Fire Release: Great Fireball Jutsu)!'

Tatsuki let out a sputtering cough and a small fireball flew from her mouth. It was a pathetic and useless rendition of the jutsu, but it was still fire, and it was good enough to light the boxes that sat on top of a storage cabinet right by her on fire, setting off the alarm, "Fire!" One of the students shouted once the sound of the flames crackling caught their attention.

The teacher pulled the fire alarm and threw the door open for the students to dart out, "Everyone stay calm! Leave the building in an orderly fashion!" She shouted as other students began to fill the halls and exit. Ichigo grabbed his bag and was much too eager to head out along with the others. Now all he had to do, "Since when do boxes spontaneously combust?"

XxX

Being the fastest, and the only one with the general direction of where to go, Ichigo in Shinigami-form appeared on a rooftop not far from his school to see a young man standing there leaning against a water tower with a smirk on his face that was mostly hidden underneath his fedora, "Hm… and here I thought hanging out up here and flexing my Reiatsu would get Uzumaki up here." The young man said, "Doesn't he *snicker* go to school here?"

"He skips." Ichigo said, slowly reaching for his Zanpakutou as he could feel the young man's Reiatsu saturating the air. When a Bount actually let loose their energy for someone to feel instead of hiding it, it was thick, "He skips a lot… and he still has decent grades. It pisses me off whatever-your-name-is."

"My name is Cain." The young man said as he took off his fedora and set it aside, "And I don't want to fight you, I'm looking for Uzumaki. So I'll let my master have a crack at you."

As he said that, a metal female humanoid appeared behind Ichigo, both of her hands spikes as she intended to stab Ichigo clean through and finish him on the spot. Ichigo tried to turn his head to see just as the arms started going down to impale him.

"Ichigo!"

A blast of spiritual energy flew at the metal woman and knocked her away from Ichigo, hitting her hard enough to send her right through the metal fence that surrounded the roof to plummet to the ground below. Ichigo turned towards the source of the blast to see Chad standing there, his armored right arm smoking from firing the blast. It now had a different appearance as it still was black with magenta markings, but the extension going up from his shoulder was longer and the arm itself seemed smoother and lacked the protrusions on it that it once had.

"Way to go Chad!" Ichigo said gratefully, getting a nod from the giant of a teenager until he noticed the man that had been wearing the fedora seemingly step from Chad's shadow, "Wait, look out!"

"Out of my way useless!" Cain shouted before delivering a kick to Chad's back that sent him through the same hole he had just punched in the fence with his powers to fall to the ground below, "Hope you enjoy the trip!" He shouted at the Mexican young man before noticing Ichigo rush him out of anger with his Zanpakutou, "I told you I don't want to fight you already!"

"I don't care what you want!" Ichigo yelled as he slashed at Cain repeatedly, watching as he stepped out of the way of his attacks, "That was a complete cheap shot! For someone that doesn't want to fight you sure don't act like it!"

Cain chuckled as he continued to dodge Ichigo's sword strikes with barely a step, "A cheap shot? I'm not fighting you to the death honorably. I'll do whatever I have to if it's a matter of me living and my enemy dying Shinigami-boy." Cain then stepped forward one hard time and shot a punch forward at Ichigo's face before hitting nothing but air, "Hm. Fast."

Ichigo reappeared a few steps back having used Shunpo to avoid the punch. After all that training he wasn't going to let himself get hit that easily, "I'm not that easy. Sorry." With that being said he settled Zangetsu in front of himself and prepared to engage again, "You might want a piece of my boss right now, but you'll have to get through me first." He then blinked and palmed his face with one of his hands, "Did I just call that idiot my boss out loud?"

"Boss huh? Maybe if I tear you apart that'll flush Uzumaki out." Cain tried to reason with himself over the pros of fighting Ichigo, "And it's been a long time since I've had a battle with anyone worth the time." Eventually he shrugged and a feral grin appeared on his face, "Fine. Let's make this quick! I need a warmup!" He walked over to where he had left his hat, keeping an eye on Ichigo in case he tried a reckless attack.

Having been prepared to fight, Ichigo was taken aback when he saw Cain pick his hat up and fish something small out of its lining, holding it in a seemingly loving manner in the palm of his hand, "What the hell are you doing?" He asked.

It merely resulted in Cain ignoring him as he used his other hand to gently stroke the small object in his palm, "Hey, it's time to wake up." Cain said soothingly, "There's someone here that wants to see how amazing you are. Come on, let's show him our power."

A rather high-pitched sounding voice yawned and then spoke to Cain in response, **"Someone wants to see my power?"** The voice asked curiously before it seemed to wake up and the tone seemed to turn darker and more ominous, **"Is it **_**him**_**?"** Ichigo could feel the Reiatsu of the environment darkly shift at that moment, but only for a moment until Cain spoke again.

"No, no." Cain said with a slight chuckle since the little speaker couldn't see who their potential opponent was, "It's not Uzumaki. We'll get to him soon enough. Let's warm up on this Shinigami first. You want to show the Shinigami just how great you are don't you?"

"**Well… okay Cain. Just so long as we get to kill him and Uzumaki soon."**

"We will. I promise." Cain said before smirking and looking over at Ichigo, "Sorry about that. It's just that she's so lazy most of the time. I have to either convince her to fight or just flat out force her. She's stronger when I can convince her."

"Her?" Ichigo said, again holding Zangetsu in a basic stance with both hands.

"My doll." Cain explained, holding up a bean-looking creature that had a pair of clearly visible closed eyes on it. He then tossed it high into the air, "Zeige Dich, Waineton (Show Yourself, Waineton)!"

Ichigo watched the bean that had been tossed in the air open its eyes to reveal them as red and brightly glowing. The body of it then began to grow larger and larger, to three times his own size as its body took the form of a praying mantis with three long claws at the end of its arms.

Waineton landed on the roof with a heavy crash and looked at Ichigo with full intent to maim and kill, and now that Waineton had been awakened he seriously took a moment to consider Cain's chances of actually defeating Naruto if they were to fight.

And he had to admit that they were better than he first figured from his first few moments encountering Cain…

But he had to get past Ichigo first.

Ichigo saw no way in hell of that actually happening. Not in a million years. Not after all of the training he'd been doing.

So with a smirk growing on his own face, Ichigo ground his feet into the roof of the building they were fighting on and rushed forward at Waineton and Cain. He didn't care which one of them wound up getting in the way of his blade, they were going to be cut down as long as they stood in front of him.

XxX

(With Chad)

Chad stood up off of the ground after his fall from the building due to Cain's kick. He was able to lessen his own impact with the ground by firing a blast of spiritual energy towards it while he was falling, serving the purpose of slowing him down and softening up the ground and the crater he fell into.

There wasn't too much cosmetic damage done to him whatsoever as he stood up in the parking lot that he landed in. Someone definitely wasn't driving that car he obliterated to break his fall again though…

And as he got up he looked over and saw the metal humanoid lady with the blade arms getting up out of a crater of her own. Well he went up onto that roof to help Ichigo fight anyway so it wasn't like he was unprepared for a battle.

"**Well look at you."** The metal female thing said in a somewhat flirtatious voice as she looked at Chad, **"You survived that fall and you've seen me and haven't run yet. This has the potential to be interesting."**

"I agree. He's stronger than other humans."

Chad turned towards the entrance of the parking lot to see a large man with an orange Mohawk walking towards him, "And who are you?" Chad asked, now even more on guard since it seemed to be two on one. Was this how the Bounts fought? Uryuu had neglected to mention that when regaling them of his experience from the night before. Maybe he was just too excited to have his powers back to inform them?

"My name is Koga Gou." The large man said, crossing his arms to show off his rather imposing muscles, "And my doll, my partner-." He then gestured his head towards the metal woman, "-Her name is Dalk."

Well since they were exchanging pleasantries, Chad saw no reason not to do the same, "My name is-."

"-Sado Yasutora." Koga said, giving Chad his own real name for him much to the large teen's surprise, "I know. We know all of the names of your little group. Kariya has been keeping his eye on things around Karakura Town for so many years, as have I. You're a dangerous bunch."

And with that, Dalk launched herself at Chad, although he moved out of the way. Instead of running Chad through with her blade arms like she had intended, she impaled another vehicle with them.

Chad took advantage of the missed attack and with a powerful grunt of effort he released a blast of energy that hit Dalk and knocked the car twenty feet away, flipping it upside down as well.

Koga watched the counter from Chad with interest, "The pure force behind that attack was pretty impressive. But it won't be that simple to defeat Dalk." This turned Chad's attention back to the overturned car where he saw Dalk lift it up off of the ground and seemingly absorb some of the metal from it before hurling it at him.

This time when Chad fired a spiritual energy blast from his right arm he put enough power behind it to knock the car into the air, sending it flying over Dalk away from everyone involved in the battle.

As he did this, Koga appeared behind Chad while holding onto a car door, prepared to smash him with it until Chad turned back around and punched a deep dent into the door that might as well have been cheap sheet metal the way it folded around Chad's fist. The impact forced Koga to drop the door and fly back a few dozen yards.

With the metal that she had just absorbed from the car, Dalk turned her arms into machine guns and proceeded to fire at Chad who jumped behind a concrete barrier with deceptive speed. The breaks between strength training with Gaara for actual combat training was a good idea.

The bullets impacting off of the concrete barrier started chipping away pieces of it, decreasing the amount of cover that was available for his use. As the barrier was steadily being picked apart by Dalk's murderous fire, Chad looked at his armored right arm and clenched his fingers into a forceful fist before diving out from behind it boldly and going for Koga again, dodging Dalk altogether to get to him.

This was a mistake however. With Dalk's bulky metal body Chad figured that she would be slower than an enhanced human being. That was certainly not the case as she was fast enough to cut him off and deliver a slash to the side of his body just as he unleashed another blast towards Koga.

Due to the injury, Chad's blast missed wide and didn't get close to Koga, 'An attack against me. He thinks that I'm vulnerable enough to attack directly.' He watched as the young man's body impacted off of the ground, blood splattering the pavement along with it, "Appearances are deceiving aren't they?" Instead of responding, Chad got up, holding the right side of his chest where his wound was, "Dalk you really need to break that habit of playing with your opponents."

"**Oh come on."** Dalk said, seemingly amused at her partner's response to her not killing Chad with her strike, **"What's the point in ending things so fast? Killing him before he even realizes how hopeless his situation is… boring."**

"I just think you missed." Chad said, bleeding, but not badly enough to get him to stop fighting, "Don't use that other thing as your excuse." It was clear that the dolls of the Bounts had personalities and tempers from the way that Dalk's face twisted into a scowl upon hearing his cool-toned attempt to taunt her. This was going to be a long, long day.

XxX

(Ichigo vs. Cain)

Waineton was absurdly strong, as every time Ichigo was forced to block a swing of her claws he'd feel his bones creak under the strain of her attack. As they clashed again, Ichigo felt the mantis-like doll grab his Zanpakutou between its claws and lift him off of the ground before chucking him into the water tower, denting it deeply with his body.

"Come on Shinigami-Ichigo!" Cain taunted as he watched his doll stalk over to Ichigo to follow up on the momentary advantage, "This isn't even worth my time if this is the best you've got!"

"Getsuga Tenshou (Moon Fang Heaven-Piercer)!"

A black crescent of energy flew at Waineton and connected with a blast off of the side of the doll's head, sending it falling to the ground. Ichigo stood up out of where he had been thrown into the water tower and cracked his neck, an unamused expression set firmly on his face, "It's a good thing that's not the best I've got then isn't it? I should be saying that to you right now."

"Waineton!" Cain yelled in alarm as he went to his massive doll's side while it got up, letting out a feral hissing noise, "You're alright?" The head of the mantis creature nodded, getting a relieved smile out of Cain, "I don't ever want you to be hurt again. I promised you that I'd make sure there was no one stronger than you ever again." He then glared over at Ichigo hatefully, "Not _him_, and especially a nobody punk Shinigami like you."

Ichigo raised an eyebrow at the angry way Cain kept referring to 'him'. The man he spoke of was Naruto and he seemed to know him pretty well, "How do you even know Naruto anyway? He doesn't know who any of you are."

"He almost ruined everything! He knows what he did, and even if he doesn't I remember!" Cain shouted angrily as Waineton seemed to get bigger as he got angrier, her eyes glowing bright red before Cain pointed at Ichigo, "Get rid of him Waineton! I'm sick of his face!"

Upon Cain's order, Waineton let out a blast of energy from her eyes directed right at Ichigo. Ichigo went wide-eyed and used the wide blade of Zangetsu to block the attack, but its force still propelled him backwards into the water tower, only this time it drove Ichigo right through it and out the other side.

"The humiliation…" Cain muttered to himself, glaring at the smoking hole in the water tower he had just blown Ichigo through with Waineton's eye-blast, "He made me look absolutely pathetic…"

_(Flashback – European Countryside – 1891)_

_Cain didn't know what he had done wrong. He had followed the instructions for the doll summoning ritual in his master Koga's book step-by-step and had been given the diminutive Waineton that refused to show him something amazing like Koga's doll Dalk._

_He wanted his doll to show him his power, and when Waineton told him that she would show him her power if he showed him hers he accepted without question. And now he was facing down Waineton's fully released, imposing form. What had he brought upon himself? He was told to never try the doll summoning ritual by himself… he should have listened._

_And he was frozen in awe and fear, having dropped to his knees as the claws of Waineton descended upon him set to end his life._

_Until a strange looking knife deposited itself into the side of Waineton's head with a thunk. A sizzling sound could be heard until the tag attached to the ring of the odd weapon exploded and knocked Waineton to the ground._

"_I didn't think it'd be that easy to find the monster those villagers hired me to take down."_

_Upon hearing a new voice, Cain turned his head to find a blonde spiky-haired man standing on a tree branch. He wore a white button-up shirt, brown slacks with black suspenders, a black fedora on his head barely taming his hair down, vibrant blue eyes, and three whisker-marks on each cheek, "W-Who are you?" He asked, completely overwhelmed at having his life saved from his own out of control doll by this odd man in the tree._

_A grin that showed off sharper than normal canines came upon the face of the newcomer as he stood ramrod straight with one hand pointed directly up into the air, "If you don't know me you're about to be educated my friend! From the sands of Spain to the steppes of Russia, from the wilds of American Oregon to the arid lands of Mexico… the men love to hate him and the ladies simply love to love him. The greatest man alive and_ your_ best friend in the world right now; the raging Sage of Six Paths! My name is-!"_

_A claw slashing at his tree and felling it cut off the man's introduction until he jumped from the branch of the tree and nailed Waineton hard in the head with a kick that again knocked the doll to the ground. Cain's eyes went wide at how this was going. It wasn't possible for any human to possess strength like that, 'It's just impossible. How is he able to do-… When even I wasn't able to…'_

_Giving the skittering Waineton the stink eye as she tried to get back up, Naruto turned his head and spit on the ground sardonically before finishing his introduction, "Ugh… just call me Uzumaki Naruto… err, I mean Naruto Uzumaki. I forgot how you Europeans put your surname last. Now what is this thing and how should I kill it?"_

_The question of how to kill Waineton struck fear in Cain's heart for more than one reason. He didn't want to die… he didn't want to die without seeing the magnificent power that he knew Waineton had and having the opportunity to use it firsthand to improve his life, "Don't kill her! Please, whatever you do don't kill Waineton! I beg of you!" He pleaded, grabbing Naruto's pant leg to beg him more appropriately._

_Naruto looked down at him with a squinted-eye gaze before turning that look up towards Waineton, "Okay fine… I'll give this thing the benefit of the doubt. Not all monsters are bad and I didn't hear about this thing killing anyone. But I've still got to stop it." He looked down at Cain and shook him off of his leg, "Stay here." For a moment Cain could swear that he saw Naruto's eyes turn from blue to an abnormal purple with a ripple pattern._

_He had no time to really dwell on it, nor question Naruto about it since the blonde sprang into action so suddenly his hat flew off of his head._

_His attention momentarily distracted by the hat, he looked back at the scene of the battle in time to see Waineton's claw go through a puff of smoke right before Naruto who was above Waineton's head held a very large ball of blue spinning light in his hand and slammed it down on the mantis-like doll, "You're all filler, no substance! __Odama Rasengan (Great Ball Spiraling Sphere)__!" With a force Cain didn't know was humanly possible, Naruto smashed a crater into the ground that kicked up dust and debris all around and generated a shockwave that knocked Cain from his knees onto his back._

_Cain shielded his eyes before concern kicked in, "Waineton!" He got up from his place on the ground and ran towards the smoke and the crater, not even thinking that if Naruto had destroyed Waineton he would have died too. _

_When he reached the crater he found Naruto standing in it holding the small bean-like form of Waineton's original sealed form in his hand. She looked very beat up and her eyes were once again closed to show that she was sleeping. Seeing this, Naruto shook his head, "You know this reminds me of something… a fight only to put something to sleep after I'm done." He then saw Cain at the end of the crater and threw Waineton at him._

_Cain caught his doll shakily and cradled her close to him with tears in his eyes as Naruto jumped out of the crater, "That thing is really precious to you huh?" Not answering verbally, Cain just nodded and gave Naruto all the answer he needed, "Well take care of it. That's all I can say."_

_He didn't know how long he stood there cradling Waineton, and he didn't know quite when Naruto had left, but before he knew it he found himself grabbed by his shoulders and turned around to face an angry Koga, "You fool!" Who proceeded to punch him right in the face, "I told you not to attempt to summon your doll without me present!"_

_Instead of arguing or tuning it out, Cain just stood there and took his berating, only speaking up once Koga was thoroughly finished, "I'm sorry Master Koga. I'll do anything you ask me to from now on… I just want to get stronger." And with that he started walking home at a demure pace to the surprise of Koga, "I'll get strong enough to use Waineton's power for real… she'll never be hurt the way _he_ did again because of me. I swear it." 'Only I should be the one to be able to tame my power. No one else. I'll become stronger than you Naruto. Me and Waineton. You'll see…'_

_As he left the clearing he saw Naruto's fedora that had flown off laying on the ground. He stared down at it with a harsh glare and took off his own cap, throwing it aside before picking up Naruto's fedora and planting it firmly atop his head, continuing on without a word._

(End Flashback)

"I trained every day to get strong enough to control Waineton, just to beat him. Kariya told me exactly who that man was when he came to get me and Master Koga. I'll kill him." Cain said, his eyes taking on a red glow just like Waineton's, "And I'll kill you too Kurosaki Ichigo… for getting in my way."

He saw Ichigo's body appear from the other side of the water tower Waineton had blasted him through, blood running down his forehead, but it didn't seem to be bothering Ichigo one bit as his face was stained with crimson, "That's why you got your power? You trained your ass off for one hundred years to kill someone because he saved you from your own dumbass mistake?" He felt like laughing if it wasn't so pathetic at heart.

"It's worked out for me…" A manic grin appeared on Cain's face, "I'm the strongest Bount of them all! Kariya may run things, but that's not because he's the strongest, it's because _I_ just don't care! I don't care about his little vendetta with the Shinigami! I don't want to even think about my past! All I care about is the future, and my future has me proving that I'm the strongest immortal being alive!"

"You're pathetic." Ichigo said distastefully, ignoring the blood coming down his face as he stared at the increasingly sociopathic Bount, "Is this what immortality turns you into? All those years alive and you never thought to do anything for anyone other than yourself and your own power? I guess having eternal life makes you a selfish prick in the end…"

"What do you know?" Laughed Cain at the thought of Ichigo trying to lecture him, "You're barely old enough to wipe your own ass and take the Velcro off of your shoes and you're trying to tell me about my life? When you live as long as me… as long as _us_… you learn that you can do anything you want! And you have to realize that you can't do just anything to make the time pass, to make the years go by! It doesn't work like that! You need a focus just to keep from being driven mad! Something to dedicate yourself to! Master Koga… I don't know what his focus used to be, but it became trying to mould me into the pride of the Bounts! It kept him sane, just like my goal did for me!"

That sounded terrible. And there went the last dregs of Ichigo's childish past thoughts of how cool it would be to have eternal life. It had been slipping away ever since he could begin to see ghosts as a kid, and that was the last of it right there, "It sounds like a curse."

"Call it what you want." Cain said, shaking his head, "You could call it a curse or a burden. I like to call it an opportunity, because I had all the time in the world to match the man I want to kill, and a baby-Shinigami like you can't stand up to me! Waineton, let's ice this pretender!" He ordered, frothing slightly at the mouth as he did so.

"**With pleasure!"** Waineton again seemed to grow in size and attacked Ichigo with all claws in a reaper-like sweeping motion that Ichigo wasn't going to avoid, not with the angle that both of the claws were coming at him with.

Ichigo jumped over one claw and stabbed Zangetsu into it, pinning the appendage to the roof while he took refuge on one side of the blade to block the second sweeping attack, but Waineton's strength had grown again along with her size, 'The crazier he gets, the stronger this doll gets. It's like he's losing himself to his own power.' As he continued to struggle against the claw he noticed Waineton begin to hiss dangerously and saw her eyes glow bright red again, 'Crap.'

"Die!" Cain shouted at Ichigo as Waineton fired another energy blast from her eyes at the exposed Ichigo. He began laughing maniacally as he couldn't see Ichigo's figure through the smoke from the previous attack, "Kariya! Who needs your stupid Bitto? I'm the strongest even without it! Nobody can beat me!"

"Bankai… Tensa Zangetsu (Heaven Chain Slaying Moon)…"

Cain heard Ichigo's low voice and turned to see him standing there now wearing a long-sleeved, ankle-length black coat with red lining instead of his Shinigami uniform. His Zanpakutou was jet-black and was smaller and thinner than it had been before with a small chain at the end of the hilt, "This is a Shinigami's Bankai?"

"It's _my_ Bankai, yes." Ichigo said matter-of-factly as he held up his sword at Cain, "There's no need for you to look for Naruto. I'm all you need right here. So if you're the strongest why don't you show me just what that means so I can crush you?"

XxX

(With Tatsuki)

"Why does Ichigo have to be so fast? He could have waited." Tatsuki questioned as she ran in the direction that she could feel Chad and Ichigo's power coming from. Unlike the others she was clearly not used to slipping away from school unnoticed even with the major distraction she laid down. Naruto had better not ever find out how much trouble she had getting away or else he'd drill her into the ground on something other than direct fighting, the only thing she was really interested in.

But with Chad and Ichigo…Whatever they were fighting, it was definitely making them exert some effort with the output they were generating. She could feel their Reiatsu from school. Fearing for her friends and their safety, she took to cutting through a nearby children's park that was deserted at that time of day to reach them faster.

She was exceedingly quicker after training so long with Naruto, faster than any normal human by ten times at least, but when compared to Ichigo it was still pretty messed up. Tatsuki absently wondered if there was a way that Naruto could teach her how to fly later.

As she ran, Tatsuki heard the familiar noise she had grown accustomed to during her training of the faint sound of metal whistling through the air. The lucky identification of said noise prompted Tatsuki to stop running forward and to duck behind the side of a nearby vending machine at a restroom area as several thick needle-like projectiles stuck themselves in it, having been aimed at Tatsuki.

With a growl, Tatsuki poked her head out to see a woman with dark green long hair wearing Chinese-looking clothing and holding an iron-tipped fan and a jian connected by a chain standing at the top of a children's swing set, "Oh how precious. You look mad at me sweetie."

"I'll show you mad." Tatsuki said heatedly as she dropped her backpack and took out a sealing scroll, quickly summoning her trench knives and holding them, ready to fight, "I beat one of your jackass friends the other night, I can beat you too."

"You think that's such an accomplishment?" Yoshi said with a smirk on her face, "Ryo was an arrogant idiot… and you had help from a weakened Shinigami and a powerless Quincy. Useless backup for sure, but better than nothing for someone like you. And now you don't even have that."

"I don't need backup to beat someone like you." While Tatsuki may have just been saying that, she had no other choice but to believe it at the moment. Ichigo and Chad were indisposed and she had no idea where Uryuu and Rukia had gotten off to. This fight would have her going solo because Yoshi did not look like she was going to be letting Tatsuki go.

Great…

Perhaps sensing Tatsuki's apprehension at fighting a supernatural foe alone, Yoshi's smirk grew and she beckoned Tatsuki forward with her fan, "Come on then, let's see how entertaining you are."

'Entertaining?' A tick mark grew on Tatsuki's head before she came out from behind her cover of the side of the vending machine and flexed her hands, gripping her trench knives tightly, 'Bitch, I'll show you 'entertaining' right now.'

Seeing the angry look on Tatsuki's face at being underestimated and swung her fan at Tatsuki, sending out more metal projectiles from the iron tips of the weapon. A disappointed look came over her face when they hit Tatsuki, stabbing into her, but it turned to an expression of surprise when Tatsuki's body was concealed in a puff of smoke and a log dropped to the ground in her place.

The surprised look gave way to Yoshi backflipping out of the way of a rising uppercut from Tatsuki ending up with both of them on the same pole of the swing set as Tatsuki began to attack her, managing to keep her balance while doing so.

Tatsuki let loose two punches that Yoshi dodged before delivering a kick to Tatsuki's stomach that sent her stumbling back on the narrow surface they were fighting upon. To follow up, Yoshi let loose a few slashes with her sword that Tatsuki managed to dodge two strokes from before blocking with her trench knives in a cross pattern.

Tatsuki then went low with a sweep, but Yoshi simply jumped over her and kicked her from behind, knocking her forward and off of the swing set beam. Upon hitting the ground, Tatsuki rolled through and back to her feet, simultaneously dodging a falling stab of Yoshi's sword as she tried to finish her after knocking her down. Upon getting to her feet, Tatsuki pressed forward and attempted a blistering assault of punches with her trench knives, gritting her teeth as Yoshi was able to divert the deadly attacks with her fan.

"You're not bad, but you're a few centuries too soon to even bother trying to fight me." Yoshi boasted as the sound of the metal of her fan sliding against the blades of Tatsuki's trench knives filled the playground, "The gap's just too wide for you to overcome." She continued as they clashed weapons again.

From the corner of her eye, Tatsuki saw Yoshi's sword hand shift. She was going to attack with her sword again. Tatsuki used one of her trench knives to punch at where she saw the trajectory of the sword going and channeled chakra to her fist, delivering a blow that sent Yoshi spinning off of her, knocked off guard.

Pins and needles were felt all throughout Yoshi's right arm after Tatsuki punched her sword away. She shook the arm out while glaring at her adversary, **"That punch wasn't bad at all."** The sword said in a male voice.

"Shut up Nieder." Yoshi said to the sword as she continued to stare Tatsuki down, "So her punch is as strong as a gorilla's. It won't matter when I cut those arms off." Along with the threat, Yoshi went back at Tatsuki, probing her with a high-aimed kick that Tatsuki ducked. This led to Yoshi spinning through and delivering a low kick with the same leg that Tatsuki was able to block somewhat with her forearms, "She does know what she's doing though."

"**Should we make this more difficult?"** This time as Nieder spoke it was in a feminine voice coming from the fan, **"It's time to go on the offensive."**

"Difficult? Offensive?" Tatsuki then saw the right arm of Yoshi gain a light blue sleeve that went up to wrap around her mouth with a green metal plate covering her shoulder. The sword in her hand began to glow yellow and six more glowing yellow swords began to trail in a clockwise arc, hanging in the air, "Oh, damn it."

Yoshi fired one of the light swords off at Tatsuki, forcing her to dodge before it could hit her. The missed attack hit a slide and destroyed it, letting Tatsuki witness the first really supernatural thing she had seen from her opponent, 'She's a close range fighter with a ranged technique.' And she was certain that those other swords hanging around the real one in Yoshi's hand wasn't there for just show either.

XxX

(Mother Base – Guest/Recruit Living Quarters Floor)

Still exhausted from expending so much energy the night before to return Uryuu's powers, an unconscious Orihime had been taken to a room to rest. The sleeping girl lay completely unaware in a bed in the room provided to her.

However, right next to her bed in a chair that seemed to be made of stone, the old man Sawatari sat, seemingly observing her, "What a lovely creature. I assume her soul would be something of a delicacy." He was able to get right past whatever defenses the base had and up to find Orihime due to the tint of her spiritual energy.

The elderly looking Bount reached his hand out to Orihime to grab a hold of her collar in order to pull her towards him.

Just as he did so however, the door to the room was kicked off its hinges and in flew a mop of blonde hair with a kunai drawn. Sawatari dropped Orihime back in her bed and blocked the weapon strike with his walking stick before smashing his attacker and sending them right through the back wall window outside. Scoffing as he knew the combat traits of his attacker, he stood up out of his strange chair and walked over to the hole in the window and wall to look down at his failed assailant, "That was Uzumaki Naruto? What simple bait to fool him, and how easy it was to defeat him."

"You really thought that was Naruto?"

Sawatari abruptly turned around only to be socked right in the face by a feminine, dark-skinned hand that sent him flying out of the hole in the wall he had just created himself. Yoruichi cracked her knuckles with a satisfied look on her face until she saw a massive whale that seemed to be covered in rock jump out of the street of the abandoned district that the main base sat in as if it were water, catching Sawatari on its back before descending back into the street without a trace in the same manner.

A scowl formed on Yoruichi's beautiful face as she looked at the sleeping Orihime. When that old man walked in she was able to hide out of his sight until he tried to make a move… and the distraction from 'Naruto' didn't hurt either. Speaking of 'Naruto', Yoruichi looked down at the person on the ground from being knocked outside by Sawatari, "Kuroudo, are you going to be alright?" She asked.

'Naruto' transformed back into the top hat wearing Mod Soul's given Gigai as he stared up at Yoruichi from where he was laying flat on his back on the grass five stories below, "I'm fine…" He sensed the man inside of the building and rushed to find him, taking Naruto's guise to attack him since it was one of the most instantly battle-ready guises he could don with his shapeshifting powers… too bad his abilities weren't close to the real one's in comparison, "I could use a kiss to help me heal though." He ventured with a painful yet lecherous grin.

He was fine if he was able to joke. Yoruichi shook her head and jumped down to where Kuroudo was with a kneel, getting close and making him believe she was actually going to acquiesce to his request… though she just retrieved his Gikongan from the Gigai and placed it in the rabbit-like purse for mobility purposes, "Maybe later you can ask Orihime for one when you tell her you saved her, but for now you're coming with me to tail that Bount. Mama's got to go fight."

Kuroudo in rabbit-purse form, pointed an ear/strap in the direction where he could feel Sawatari's energy and Yoruichi scooped him up before giving chase with Shunpo.

XxX

(Meanwhile – The Roof of Mother Base)

When Sawatari was punched out of the hole in the wall, Naruto saw it and witnessed the whale-like creature catch him out of the air before vanishing into the ground. Naruto stood up with his eyes showing that he had been in Sage Mode, and he could sense the multiple conflicts going on around Karakura Town. He would have left… but he still had Shuuhei watching his moves.

Naruto's cell phone went off and he picked it up with a serious look on his face, "Yeah?" He listened to the person on the other line for a moment before letting out a sigh, "You're killing me here Hidan." More silence as he listened again, "Fine… do it." He hung up and turned to Hisagi who was also aware of the fights going on, "Are you going to help me out here?"

Shuuhei frowned and reluctantly shook his head, "I would, but I have strict orders not to fight unless I'm attacked first."

"How strict?"

"Strict enough for a double-limiter placed on our persons before we all left the Seireitei. I'd have to call it in and convince them it was an emergency."

Naruto nodded, "Then could you go inside and make sure Orihime stays safe for me? And don't come outside… as a matter of fact take her to the training room in the basement." He didn't want to be 'that guy' that tried to command someone that wasn't even on his team in the first place, but his tone let it be known that if he wasn't going to fight it was in his best interest to do so.

Shuuhei didn't know why he was asking him to do so since the fights were nowhere near them, but when Naruto put a hand on his shoulder and momentarily transferred his ability to sense negative emotion, he immediately understood why, "This seriously doesn't sit well with me… letting you do this by yourself."

"It's not your fault." Naruto assured him with a weak grin, "You've got to do what you've got to do."

With that, Shuuhei hustled his way downstairs and left Naruto alone on the roof. Or so it seemed.

The moment it was clear that no one else would be coming for help or arriving to interfere, a powerful blast of fire went right at Naruto and engulfed him and the entire roof of the base only to be absorbed into a scroll that Naruto had prepared with a sealing array on it, "Fuuka Houin (Fire Sealing Method)!" As the fire vanished from sight into the scroll, it revealed that Goethe was right behind Naruto on the roof.

A fiery punch from the flame-based doll went right through Naruto and revealed him to be a Kage Bunshin when it dispelled into a puff of smoke.

On the ground in an alley near Mother Base, Yoshino glared up at the roof of said building just waiting for the next move to be made until she could sense the shift of Naruto's palpable energy signature while in Sage Mode move right behind her in the hiding place. She turned to face him with an angry glare as he stood still and simply stared her down with his odd eyes, "Why did you come here?" He asked uncharacteristically stoically, "Is this all a part of the Bount's plan to take us all out?"

"I don't care about the other Bounts or their plans. I just care about making you pay." Yoshino said before beginning to attack Naruto with her bare hands. Showing underplayed skills in hand-to-hand combat she went right at Naruto, forcing him on the defensive as he slapped away her every punch and kick directed at him before letting one land on his cheek, turning his head to the side and leaving a scuff mark on his cheek but other than that not hurting him much to her surprise and chagrin.

It was a strong punch. Definitely the strongest punch he had been hit with by a living person in centuries. But in Sage Mode she needed more power if she was going to try and hurt him with a physical attack, or a Reiatsu that could match the energy flowing through him at the moment.

However it was just a side to give Goethe time to blaze his way over from the base and drop down with an attack all for Naruto as he gathered fire beneath himself and pressed the ground with a stomp, looking to crush and incinerate Naruto as Yoshino jumped away.

Yoshino watched Naruto jump from wall to wall in order to scale to the roof and grit her teeth, doing the same in a way as she jumped off of a wall before easily scaling a fire escape, "Goethe, stop him!"

Goethe turned his feet into afterburners and lifted off of the ground to quickly go after Naruto, only when he made it up over the room he was blasted with a forceful wave of chakra. When Yoshino peeked her head above the corner of the roof she went wide eyed when she saw Naruto's right arm as a laser cannon like something out of a sci-fi movie until the skin went back around it, making him seem like some kind of cyborg.

Naruto's eyes turned from where he had shot Goethe into three large pieces on another rooftop and towards Yoshino, showing his Rinnegan eyes in what she perceived as a cold stare until his gaze seemed to soften, "Yoshino I don't want to fight you. Please just stop."

Did he really believe it would just be that simple? That he could say that he didn't want to fight and that would be that? This was her desire. She wanted him to hurt as much as he had hurt her by just leaving her behind. The only person she ever thought knew what it was like to be somewhat like her, and now that she knew they had even more in common than she thought, with the immortality and the abilities, it just made her all the more angrier.

"You can't just have my forgiveness that easily." Yoshino said as she pulled herself up onto the roof, not choosing to back down from him the way he had requested, "I've lived for so long… for so many years before I ever even met you. The loneliness was crushing and there are so many things that I can't even remember anymore, but I remember you; the kind reclusive mercenary outside of my old village. But I was just a burden you couldn't wait to get rid of, right?"

"That's not true." Naruto said, narrowing his eyes at her, "I thought you were mortal. I've seen so many people I've tried to befriend over the years die while I just stayed the same. I'm sick of seeing that happen. I couldn't do it again, and you just spent so much time with me I figured it would happen again." He then shook his head and held its sides, "But it wasn't my fault Yoshino, I had to leave."

"You could have taken me with you!"

"I thought you were a regular human, and if I took you with me a normal human would have been killed!" Naruto snapped in return, "I had to outrun Frederick's standing army! I was a 'domestic threat'! A terrorist to him because of the things that I did to try and stop the Seven Years' War! They found out I was staying near your village and they were coming for me!" He felt his anger spike and realized what had happened the last time it had done so, 'Come on… calm down. Don't call on that power here. Don't draw on the jinchuuriki form in anger… it'll just wake him up faster.'

Yoshino just shook her head as if she didn't want to hear it and Goethe reformed and landed in front of her in a blast of fire, "It doesn't matter. If you had taken me with you, you would have seen my powers and learned what I was. If you had taken me with you my heart wouldn't have been broken-."

'Her heart?' Naruto thought in alarm as she continued to speak.

"-And if you had taken me with you I wouldn't have been so pathetic… pathetic enough for that man to take advantage and make me believe in what he was saying." Then as if she had really come to terms with what she was about to do, Yoshino's eyes hardened on Naruto's form with a new sort of resolve, "But even now, if it will make you realize just what you really did to me by running away without even saying goodbye I'll fight with _him_… because I can't beat you by myself."

So there would be another one to try and take him on as well. That certainly didn't reassure Naruto very well. He might have to get further away from Mother Base if he were going to fight, 'Him?' Naruto extended his senses and was shocked to find that with Yoshino and Goethe saturating the vicinity with their Reiatsu he didn't register the close presence of another until then, even with the sensitive abilities of his to feel energy while in Sage Mode.

Naruto turned around to see a man standing on the same rooftop as him, Yoshino, and Goethe. In his hand he held a strange weapon with a wind blade and a hilt that looked like some kind of symbol, but his armament was not what really got Naruto's attention.

What caught Naruto's notice were the pair of sharp red eyes, the white hair, and the vertical scar on the left side of his chin, "You too? This can't be right…" He said to himself quietly as if he were trying to convince himself.

"Yoshino my dear, I hope you haven't been having too much fun with our dear friend Naruto without me. You always were too hasty most of the time, I told you to wait until every other part of this assault was set." Ignoring Naruto's stunned visage, the new arrival addressed Yoshino.

"I don't have to wait for you Kariya." Yoshino said, not showing any sort of affection for one that was to be her comrade, "Your plans don't mean anything to me. I'm only even doing this for myself for one reason."

Still, despite the banter between the two Bounts, Naruto's head was swimming as he dredged up the last time he had seen Kariya's face.

_(Flashback – Prussia – 1758)_

"_You're telling me they know where I am?" A panicked Naruto said, hopping to his feet out of his chair in his small hut in the woods outside of Yoshino's village. Today he found that he had been visited by one of his better informants on what was going on around the capital of this country, it helped to get rumors on any possible offensives from the Prussian military to help him know when to make his own moves to try and end the war as it was really beginning to get out of hand, "There's just no way! I made absolutely sure I wasn't being tailed before doubling back after my last mission! They should think I fled to Poland!"_

"_I don't know what to tell you Naruto. This is what I've learned from my sources in the court. I raced here as soon as I could as a force is being mobilized now. They believe that you have more than just yourself and that wherever they catch wind of you being is the cradle of your operations. If they find you here they'll raze this village to the ground for treason due to you staying here."_

_Naruto punched a hole through his wall out of anger, "I… I can't let them do that…" He let out a desperate sigh and massaged his scalp before getting up and pacing around, "How long?"_

"_A day behind me. I had to go to painstaking efforts to slip past them unnoticed you know."_

_A nod of understanding came from Naruto as he went over to a table and grabbed a satchel that he threw to his informant gratefully, "I have to go now then. I can't let them get sight of me somewhere around here. I just can't." He pasted a sad smile on his face as he extended his hand to the man, "There's no way I can really repay you for all you've done for me. You're the most standup man I've met in years. Take care of yourself Eugene Currier."_

_Eugene stood up and took Naruto's hand in a hearty shake with a smile of his own on his face, "You don't have to worry about me one bit Naruto. You can trust me when I say I know exactly what I need to do to stay alive." In a gentleman's dress, he had long white hair, sharp red eyes, and a vertical scar on the left side of his cheek._

(End Flashback)

Kariya finally looked at Naruto and smirked at his expression, "What's the matter Naruto? It's been such a long time and you've got nothing to say to an old friend? As a matter of fact you look like you've seen a ghost."

"Yeah…" Naruto said weakly with a minor humorless quirk of his lips, "I've been getting a lot of that these days actually."

* * *

**What's this now? Three Bounts know of Naruto? What are the chances? And now he's fighting two of them alone! And where the hell are Hidan and Gaara? As a matter of fact where the hell are Uryuu, Rukia, or Rangiku? And where is Urahara?**

…**Well Urahara is usually the kind of guy that watches things like this happen for whatever reason… but the point still stands!**

**So, yeah. I got a cold slap in the groin via Daylight Savings on Sunday. I lived an entire day one hour back like time was still forward. I didn't realize it or even care until I got up and drove to the campus for class one hour early Monday morning.**

**That actually happened. I don't even know how that's possible. I just had a day-long, uninterrupted stupid moment and not a single person thought to correct me.**

**I don't even know how I managed to function like that all day. I'm kind of scared right now, like I lived through some kind of amazing time paradox. And nobody told me shit because I didn't go anywhere or do anything yesterday. I'm so mad right now… but I did get a lot of stuff done on Sunday and even Monday morning, so I guess that's a good thing.**

**Anyway, I'm going to go gets me some Modern Warfare 3 tonight… because that's how I'll be rolling for the rest of the week; getting in touch with my inner sociopath by shooting up some poor saps courtesy of Captain Price and Soap McTavish. Hell I might not even bother going to class tomorrow (I only have one)…**

**Yes…**

**D.E.A.D spells dead I said,  
and when you're in my scope your ass eats lead**

**That very same lead goes right into your head,  
and the lead in your head covers the ground with red**

**My killstreak bombings are always in a spread,  
with your kill-death ratio you should have stayed in bed**

**The sound of the pave low fills your heart with dread,  
my only sincere wish is that my RPD was belt-fed.**

…**because reloading light machine gun classes is a bitch.**

***A Call of Duty: Modern Warfare-based poem by Kenchi618.***

**...Who is out of here. Later.**


	24. Supernatural Shootout

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. This has disheartened me greatly… I'm going to Canada.

**Chapter 24: Supernatural Shootout**

* * *

"Is the little Quincy all out of breath?" Mabashi taunted as he had Uryuu chasing him over the rooftops swiftly, "You may have gotten your powers back but you're completely out of shape! It's completely pathetic."

Uryuu narrowed his eyes as he continued his pursuit, trying to get a clean shot at his Bount foe. This guy just ups and picks a fight with Uryuu when he and the others split up to leave school and then runs away after trying to take a cheap shot at him with whatever his powers happened to be.

How he was moving so quickly without the blatant use of Reiryoku was impressive, but with hundreds of years to hone one's body it wasn't much of a wonder.

"**Comin' right at you Quincy!"**

From the sound of the high pitched cry of… warning? Uryuu had to duck in order to avoid the fast little projectile that came right at him in an attempt to take his head out, trying to take advantage of his blindside. Such a strange little creature. It was obviously Mabashi's doll, but it moved so fast he couldn't get a good look at it.

"Stop warning him when you're going to attack Ritz!" Mabashi said, though he was still smirking as Uryuu got back up to continue chasing him, "Even if he does suck, you don't need to hold his hand and help him fight."

"**Aww… Okay Mabashi. Whatever you say."**

He sucked? And how would this person even know if Uryuu was rusty or not? If he wasn't skilled or not? He wasn't even standing to fight him, he had been running away from the moment he revealed himself and Uryuu had been in hot pursuit of him ever since, "You certainly like talking a lot, but none of it means a thing when you yourself haven't even scratched me yet." Uryuu retorted, "By all means keep running. And when I catch you and put an arrow through your heart you can keep talking, this time about the Quincy that killed you."

And with that, the chase continued across their district of Karakura Town.

Only there was someone attempting to follow the chase at her own speed, which was significantly slower than the other two for her own reasons.

"Damn it, when am I going to recover the rest of my Reiatsu?" Rukia grumbled to herself as she kept pace enough to be able to find Uryuu by his energy but lagged behind out of range of actually being able to engage in the battle, "Uryuu needs to slow down… getting his powers back shouldn't let him overlook how dangerous an enemy can be." She looked around the area she was running to and came to an abrupt stop when she saw a familiar face, "And what the hell do you think you're doing at a time like this?" She bellowed with a tick mark on her head despite the situation.

XxX

(Abandoned Industrial District – Uzumaki Naruto vs. Kariya Jin/Souma Yoshino)

"So what's your reason for not telling me you had powers like this Eugene?" Naruto said, switching his dialect to that of German to let Kariya know that he knew who he was, "I let you know about mine when I had you on as my informant in the court. Wouldn't it have been easier to let me know about it back then?"

"I had my reasons of keeping them secret Naruto, you can be sure of that." Kariya said in German as well with a calm smile on his face, "But what was your own reason for keeping your abilities secret from Yoshino? Did you simply not trust her? Or did you think she would consider you a monster?"

"It was better for everyone that way." A growl came from Naruto as he spoke, switching his language back to Japanese. There was no need to rock the boat further. Yoshino already wanted him burned to a crisp, and now he had more on his plate to deal with than that. Stupid Juubi/Sasuke… he just wanted to get pissed and wreck shop, but he had to take into account that he could risk waking the damn demon up if he got too riled up.

This of course did not assuage Yoshino in the slightest, "As far as you think it was better for everyone. You could just flitter off to the next place where no one knew your name, doing your work all the while. I had nothing and no one again. Goethe!" She snapped, ordering her long since reformed doll to attack with a pair of fireballs from both of its hands.

'Enough of this crap.' An irritable Naruto thought to himself. Between all of this Bount stuff, the fact that it was unknown when Aizen would make his next move, and the mounting tension he had of once again controlling the power within him he had enough troubles to deal with. If she didn't want to listen that was just fine with him, "You know, talking's sort of what I do but I can also kick your ass if that's what you really want!" Naruto punched the roof of the building they were standing on and split it enough for his entire body to easily fit into to dodge it.

Narrowing her eyes at the hole in the roof, Yoshino mentally issued an order to Goethe to pick her up and use his legs as jets to hover in the air as he torched the entire building, using the hole Naruto had made as its focal point of aim.

"Eager aren't we? You didn't even wait for me to clear the area first."

Yoshino barely registered Kariya hovering near her and Goethe with wind keeping him from falling to the ground. Her attention more kept on the building that was caught in a blaze from her last attempt to burn and defeat Naruto. She didn't care if she got Kariya with one of her attacks. She didn't hold anymore love for him after what he had become.

From the flames of the building flew a volley of half a dozen fuuma shuriken that Goethe carried Yoshino out of harm's way of, and Kariya simply stayed in place and smirked as a barrier of wind appeared to block the shuriken thrown at him. The smirk faded when the shuriken all turned into Naruto clones with large spinning blue orbs of chakra in their grasps, "Senpou: Odama Rasengan (Sage Art: Great Ball Spiraling Sphere)!"

A bright blue flash preceded a large explosion in the air around Kariya that blew Goethe and Yoshino away from the epicenter of the blast.

'He countered in one move. He can make crushing attacks look like complete feints.' Yoshino thought to herself as the sky was still covered in the smoke from the blast of the coinciding Rasengan barrage. A wave of those dangerous-looking, but easy to spot giant shuriken, and Naruto only used them as a base to transform his clones into, "Just what exactly is his power in the first place? Nothing he's capable of makes sense."

As she let her thoughts air out loud she was barely able to register the 'fwip' noise of Naruto appearing behind her in a moment's notice before effortlessly birfucating Goethe with the Raijin no Ken. He quickly put up the lightning elemental blade and grabbed the lower half of the doll's tough magma-like body, ripping it apart with the advanced strength he was granted in Sage Mode before whipping around and hurling the body parts away like missiles.

They were going for miles. Now what was she going to do with only half of her damn doll to fight him with?

He turned his eyes back towards Yoshino to see Goethe still hovering in the air, with only the doll's torso and arms that were still holding his master. From the bottom of the torso was a jet of flames that had it looking something like a rocket.

"Wind Licht Schneide (Wind Light Edge)!"

A tingling in the back of his mind gave him the inclination to turn around and swiftly redraw his Raijin no Ken. He deftly dodged a slim blast of wind that missed Naruto and cut deeply into a building below him instead of the blonde that was the original target.

"Just as strong as I always assumed you'd be from surviving as long as you have." Kariya looked barely any worse for wear after dealing with Naruto's clones' exploding Rasengan barrage, though now he no longer had a top as he had discarded it to show a muscular frame and an elaborate tattoo on his body.

Naruto looked down at the large and nasty gash that was in the building below him, "If you want to beat me, or if you even want to get close you'd better have something up your sleeve that's better than that Eugene."

"I prefer to be called Kariya Jin now if you don't mind Naruto." Kariya said calmly, holding his wind sword up at the ready to continue fighting. Even if he wouldn't admit it with his need to be in control of what was going on, Kariya actually _hadn't_ anticipated Naruto to be as strong as he was. After all… in the end, Naruto was still just a human, and even with centuries behind him a human couldn't possibly match the supernatural with equal or greater years.

He had no idea that Naruto was actually far older than even the Bounts, nor did he really grasp the full scope of just what that entailed since he had no knowledge of the man's age.

Letting out a grunt that basically translated to, 'I'll call you whatever the hell I want to and it won't matter because you'll be dead soon anyway.' Naruto decided to test and see just how sturdy Kariya's blade of wind was against his lightning-based sword as the two blurred out of sight in mid-air and reappeared, swinging their respective weapons about with violent and indescribable noises sounding out from the clash of the two paranormal blades.

Much to Naruto's delight, the ancient knowledge of wind having the advantage over lightning didn't seem to translate to Kariya's sword overcoming his own. But as he planned on pressing forward with an attack again, he prematurely felt the scorch of flames that were headed his way and cut out his gravity control to fall to the ground in order to avoid it. Having fire lick at his body was not something he particularly wanted to test out.

With that, Naruto landed in the middle of the street and looked up to see Goethe sans Yoshino, probably after making sure she was well out of harm's way, flying at him like a rocket. It looked like a straightforward divebomb of an attack, but with his special eyes Naruto could see the buildup of energy coming from the body of the doll and didn't like it one bit.

It was too much of a build for it to be nothing more than a regular attack or even just a common jet of flames, and this was why Naruto dove hard away from Goethe's point of impact. The fire construct's body became the epicenter of a mammoth plume of flames spilling from it.

"Windestanz (Wind Dance)!"

A series of tornadoes formed in the middle of the blaze and fanned the flames to the extent that they wound up being covered in them, sending entire spinning funnels of fire speeding at Naruto.

'If people could see this they'd be crapping their pants right now.' Naruto thought as he found himself surrounded by the flaming tornadoes only to look up and see Goethe flying directly down at his trapped form once again, "Shinra Tensei (Heavenly Subjugation of the Omnipresent God)!" With a massive unseeable push in every direction around him, Naruto rid the area of the flames before they could touch his body.

"A bad time to be standing still old friend."

Naruto's eyes turned towards Kariya getting inside of his personal space. His arms were still held out from his previous use of Shinra Tensei to defend himself from the fire tornadoes, 'Son of a bitch, he doesn't even know about the five seconds thing and he got right in here!' Kariya didn't miss a beat, even without knowing that gravity techniques left Naruto vulnerable chakra-wise for five seconds at a minimum.

Still, even without the use of chakra for five seconds, Naruto could still move and block Kariya's attempt at cutting him with his wind sword as they clashed again, "You missed your chance to finish me off there if you didn't know." Naruto said informatively as he began pushing Kariya back, "You can't beat me in a straight up fight."

"Just because her doll isn't a direct weapon type like my own…" Kariya said, smirking fitfully as Naruto's sword drew closer to wounding him due to the blonde's own brute force steadily driving him back, "Don't think that Yoshino can't fight you herself."

The awareness given by Sage Mode allowed Naruto to feel the shift in the atmosphere as he ducked a punch from behind sent at him by Yoshino. A risky attempt to harm him that didn't pay off as Naruto lashed out with the Raijin no Ken only for her to back handspring handily out of the way of the attack.

Kariya took advantage of Naruto's momentary lapse of attention and took a swing at him with a punch only for Naruto to lean out of the way and respond with a kick that missed, but with the extra reach given to him by his specialized taijutsu, the leader of the Bounts still to the hit and flew off to the side to crash through a wall of a building on the side of the road.

A smirk crossed Naruto's face as he decked his adversary, but he found himself engulfed in a jet of flames for his troubles. Seeing Naruto engulfed in flames put a smirk on Yoshino's face… until she saw the fire that had covered him begin to swirl around and dissipate with Naruto leaping directly at Goethe with a pair of Rasengans in his hands, "Senjutsu: Rasenrengan (Sage Technique: Spiraling Serial Spheres)!"

Naruto smashed the chakra orbs through Goethe and tore it apart like a piñata before Yoshino was on him again, preparing a kick at his head. Naruto blocked with a high kick of his own that made her feel like she had just tried to kick through a steel beam instead of someone's leg. She landed back on the ground and dropped to one knee as the leg she used to try and kick Naruto gave out on her.

She looked back up and let out a gasp before covering up as best she could and dodging in the same manner as Naruto and a swiftly made clone used their identical Raijin no Ken to cut her on opposite sides of her body. If the slashes didn't hurt, the electricity coursing through her after being wounded with the sword certainly did its due damage.

A flinch came to Naruto's eye as he saw the shocking effect of a wound from his weapon of choice. He hadn't used it on a person in a long, long, long time. Even if he was fighting against her now he still knew her and to hear the voice of someone he had been close to crying out in agony jabbed at him, especially since he had been the cause of it.

And when he saw Goethe move to attack him again he had to squash that niggling thought in his head as he rushed towards Yoshino, 'Beat the Bount and the doll is useless no matter how tough it is.' He had gathered that destroying a doll would destroy a Bount from the fight Uryuu had partaken in alongside Gaara the other night, but no matter how hard he hit Yoshino's doll it would reconstitute itself.

Goethe shot a burst of flame at Naruto before he reached Yoshino only for a flaming piece of debris that happened to be from one of the nearby rundown buildings to fly out and smash into her at a high speed in his place.

"Fuuton: Akuma no Shinkuu (Wind Release: Devil's Vacuum)!"

Goethe was surrounded by a pair of Narutos as they had their hands outstretched with an orb of wild looking wind between them, trapping the doll inside. The fire and magma that seemed to construct Goethe started to dissipate and it began to look like a newly cooling igneous rock instead of an angry heat-based elemental.

Yoshino got over her muscle spasms from the electricity to see her doll trapped and seemingly fading fast, 'No! He's sucking all of the oxygen out of the fire!' She could feel her own power fading as Goethe's did, 'If Goethe's fire goes out for good then I'll die… and I can't reseal him from here.' She stood back up and ran at the pair of Narutos to try and find a way to stop them on her own until she fell back down to the ground breathing heavily, her Reiatsu fading in time with Goethe's.

Eventually her vision faded and she fell, eyes closed onto the street as Naruto continued to snuff out Goethe's flames.

The technique was working until from Naruto's orb of wind, a pair of small cyclones formed from where both of the Narutos were keeping in contact with the jutsu and shoved them off forcefully, propelling them into walls on opposite sides of the street hard enough to drive them through walls where they disappeared in puffs of smoke.

"Sorry Naruto." Kariya said, bleeding from the lip and the right side of his head either from Naruto's smashing blow or from the segmented brick cutting him thereafter, "I can't let you kill Yoshino… not yet anyway. I still need her you see."

From out of seemingly thin air, the Raijin no Ken fell to the ground from the sky and missed Kariya. The sword impaled itself into the street, ramrod straight as electricity began to generate from it in a doming formation, a pressure inside forming that was intense enough to crush the pavement and pull it off of the ground to be centered in the dome where it was turned to dust, "Urami Bukai Kamiten no Nigiri (Heavenly Grip of the Vengeful God)!"

'That would have crushed me like a tin can if I were caught inside of it.' Kariya thought as he looked around for where Naruto actually was. He had destroyed Naruto's clones, but they were all preoccupied with choking the life out of Goethe, who looked like a cooled volcano rock with only faint traces of hot red coming from it. Kariya let out a ghost of a smile when he saw Goethe revert back to flame and disappear. The doll had recalled itself to rest and restore Yoshino's power, "You won't be killing Yoshino yet Naruto. She's too unique amongst us Bounts. She is the only one that can reproduce."

"So the fate of the race lies with her huh?" Naruto said, surprising Kariya as he hadn't even noticed Naruto kneeling over Yoshino's prone body, a look of interest in his eyes as he observed her, "If I kill her there won't be any more Bounts period after the rest of you die. That's… kind of sad really." Even though they were created from the mistakes of others that was no logical reason to get rid of them just because. Not every Bount was evil, right? Just like how every Hollow wasn't pure evil; most of them were just pretty primal from what he had seen and had been told.

"But we won't die… so the point is moot." Was the arrogant sounding response from the head of the Bounts, "At this point all that we can do is go ahead and achieve our goal. The Seireitei will fall by our hand."

This didn't sound like some revenge kick. His way of speaking was familiar. Naruto had heard the inflection he had used before; making something sound important when compared to other things done in the past it really was not. The way he spoke was the way Naruto figured he sounded back when he eventually first decided to try his hand at authoring an Icha Icha book in an effort to get it published. He sounded tired… or even bored.

"You don't really want to do that do you?" Naruto said as he absently used Banshou Ten'in on the Raijin no Ken to get it back, "You're tired."

Kariya's face held the stone appearance of an unshakable resolve only faltering momentarily when he realized that he and Naruto were the only people around that could hear, "It's true that I'm tired of my existence. I want to see how far I can go with this everlasting life of mine, and I do wish to bring the Seireitei down. At some point you simply have to stop wondering 'what if' and decide to take things into your own hands. That is why I've gathered my brothers and sisters."

"So back when you worked with me… what was that?"

"I figured you to be a Bount as well at first and tried to establish a rapport with you like I did with quite a few others that I had found, but it was clear that you were not soon after." Kariya explained, "You never had a doll, at least one that I could see whenever you fought despite how supernatural your abilities were, and you never took a single spirit in the five years I knew you to keep your immortality. Living or otherwise. You did find me a Bount though… thank you for that." He gestured his sword towards Yoshino, "Were it not for you I wouldn't have discovered the key to the Bounts' success in the coming invasion."

What the hell did that mean? Yoshino most definitely wasn't strong enough to go toe-to-toe with any captain in the Seireitei. Naruto had fought Soi-Fon and he had fought Yamamoto; even though they all didn't go full tilt, with neither captain using their Bankai against him and Naruto not drawing upon the darkest of his abilities, he doubted highly that even if Yoshino had a higher switch than what she showed she still would not come close to beating any of them.

"You and Yoshino can't beat me when you're fighting me together two-on-one." Naruto commented with a skeptical expression on his face, "You and your Bounts are going to try and sack the Seireitei? How the hell are you going to do that?"

Pointing at the downed Bount woman at Naruto's mercy, Kariya's smirk came back, "I've learned that absorbing the souls of living humans won't give us the boost we need to stand against the Gotei 13. It gives us more strength but it won't maximize our potential. Yoshino holds within her a rare power. She can do things that no other Bount can. When she is at the peak of her spiritual power I will take her soul and all of the power that comes with it to form a special doll that will help us harvest the purest essence of human souls."

He was going to take the soul of his comrade to make himself strong enough to fight on par with the lieutenants and captains of the Gotei 13. That was something that struck a chord with Naruto and something that he took personally; someone taking the life of another simply to gain strength in a hurry.

Kariya held his arms out to the side nonchalantly, "Now if you were really willing to do what you could to stop my plan there is always the avenue of killing Yoshino. I mean she's right there in your arms… but people don't change that drastically even over the course of 250 years."

"There is another way to stop your plan though." Naruto said in a deceptively calm voice as he stood up from where he was kneeling by Yoshino, making sure to take her finger claw and bracelet away from her as he did, "I can kill _you_ instead. How does that suit you?"

XxX

(Tatsuki vs. Yoshi)

Dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge.

Yes, it might have been stolen directly from an American movie that Naruto began to mercilessly draw from again by chucking kunai at Tatsuki instead of wrenches (which Tatsuki actually would have preferred in comparison), but it held weight, and it was saving her ass as she found it exceedingly difficult to get herself close to Yoshi to register any kind of relevant offense against her.

The reason being because she would shoot swords of light at Tatsuki that had high destructive capabilities.

"**She's quite fast, especially for a human."** Yoshi's doll Nieder commented in its male voice due to it being in what she referred to as its offensive form, **"You should aim better and stop wasting my power on misses."**

"Shut up Nieder!" Yoshi said in irritation at her spiritual partner's smart remarks, "She can't keep this up forever. Evenually she'll slip up, and even if she doesn't she can't win this fight just by running away and letting me wreck this park." Even if it was fun for her. Tatsuki wasn't even trying to get close from Yoshi's point of view.

Tatsuki ducked behind a wrecked up merry-go-round, breathing heavily as she took a moment of reprieve from fighting this losing battle.

'Damn it, why can't I hit this bitch? I can't get close and it's taking everything I've got just to play keep away from those swords of hers.' Tatsuki thought to herself, breathing slightly heavily due to the sheer amount of effort she was giving just to stay in one piece. There wasn't really anywhere to run. If no one had arrived to help her fight yet then that meant that the Bount she was engaged in combat with wasn't the Bount that was felt when they were at school, "Fine… I guess it's time to bluff…" Reaching into the supply pouch high up on her thigh underneath her uniform's skirt, Tatsuki grabbed four shuriken.

Quickly peeking her head out from her place of cover she threw the shuriken at Yoshi before hiding once more, knowing that they would miss as they sailed past her. Yoshi dodged the metal throwing stars and saw Tatsuki dart out from the other side of where she had been taking cover at the merry-go-round. Smirking at watching the girl try and use her projectiles as a weapon, Yoshi fired off a light sword of her own, hitting Tatsuki's vicinity flush and throwing up dirt and all other sorts of things from the impact of the attack.

"I told you I would hit her. She's not that fast at all." Yoshi boasted before she heard footsteps and turned to another direction to see Tatsuki running towards her, a determined face as she got closer than she had been able to since Yoshi started using the real attack form of her doll, "Oh no way in hell… Nieder!" She dodged Tatsuki's first punch, but it was moot at that point because the girl was now well in range to continue attacking as Yoshi's sword went back to normal and her fan reappeared.

After a moment the sword the disappeared and Yoshi's fan turned far larger than it had previously been, to a size that could easily cover Yoshi, with more durable looking armor covering that entire arm than had been on the arm that had the sword when it had transformed. Tatsuki reached her and delivered a punch that forced Yoshi to unfold the fan. And the fan stopped her punch cold.

"What?" With her fist still against the sturdy fan that didn't even budge from her punch, Tatsuki grit her teeth and began punching away at the fan as best she could. She had done so much just to get that close to do any damage and she wasn't about to let the opportunity pass, "It's a stupid fan! I've got these knuckle dusters from hell and I'm getting past this thing one way or another!"

Any attempts by Tatsuki to get around the fan were snubbed out by the sheer size of it and the fact that Yoshi didn't move it slowly. Kicks would fail no matter how far out of left field or how low she threw them. Growling to herself as her best haymaker of a punch barely shoved Yoshi back, Tatsuki started generating chakra in her right hand getting it to spin with the maximum amount of power she could before slamming it forward.

"Rasengan (Spiraling Sphere)!"

The orb of a jutsu collided with the fan and with a blast sent both Yoshi and Tatsuki back as the powerful striking force hit something it couldn't plow through. Yoshi went sliding across the ground on her heels while Tatsuki was propelled back into the air, flipping and landing on her feet in a crouch, narrowing her eyes at Yoshi and her fan.

"That was a good move." Admitted Yoshi in a patronizing fashion despite the fact that she had not taken any damage from the attempted attack, "…For a human. But it's still too weak for you to get anywhere near close to busting through Nieder's defense. You've got a lot of fight in you though." She said as she shifted her weapon back to the normal fan and sword joined by a chain, "I like that." She sent out a spray of needles from the fan's tips that Tatsuki dodged and then transformed her weapon back into its offensive form with the trailing light swords.

And with that, Tatsuki found herself on the run again, only this time Yoshi wasn't content with sitting back and shooting light sword projectiles at her, choosing to try and stab or cut her with her weapon of choice.

Getting her hands up, Tatsuki thanked her lucky stars that she had such a well-made pair of weaponry at her disposal. The trench knives held up against Yoshi's assault and then some, though she was steadily being driven back as a grin started peeking through on the green-haired Bount's face, "Just because you're fighting like it's hopeless, don't think I'm gonna just let you run away. The entire reason I even went along with this whole thing was to fight! Back in the old days it was perfect for a person like me. So much fighting going on, you could spit in any given direction and you'd probably stumble on some big conflict that was just aching for someone like me to get involved. Nowadays not so much. So I'll take what I can get out of you!"

With that declaration, she powered past Tatsuki's defenses and cut her deeply with a vertical slash down her shoulder and front, and with the trail of swords she was cut in the same place over four times, staining her uniform and the ground with her blood as she was knocked to the ground.

'Damn it I can't believe she got me…' Tatsuki thought faintly. Bleeding out in the open air on the ground instead of in the controlled environment of the training facility was quite a different experience. For one, here there was no one to call a stop to the fight, nor was there an Orihime to immediately spring to action to heal her, 'Being the second strongest girl in Japan doesn't mean a damn thing when I'm trying to fight weirdoes and monsters… ugh.'

"If more humans fought like you…" Yoshi started to say, having been rather pleased by the battle as she turned Nieder back to its normal sword and fan state, "Then war probably wouldn't have needed to get so hands-off and boring. Any idiot with a gun and a steady grip thinks they can fight these days. I'd love to see an idiot try to pull a gun on you the way you are… well, were. Because unfortunately I can't let you walk away from this one. Thanks for the fight though… and the soul."

She reached for Tatsuki to begin sucking out her soul while she was still alive, but before she did the landscape of the park turned into the inside of a random warehouse, utterly confusing Yoshi and putting her on alert. In front of her, standing between her and Tatsuki was a blonde Shinigami with a rather prominent bust, but that was unimportant as her sword was blocked by the new arrival's Zanpakutou.

"So are you the one that did this?" Yoshi asked as the two crossed blades, "It's kind of a lame Zanpakutou power. All you did was change the setting of the fight? Who are you by the way?"

"Matsumoto Rangiku. 10th Division Lieutenant." Rangiku said with a smirk, "This isn't my Zanpakutou's power by the way. It's not a power of mine at all."

From behind an illusionary crate, Ririn popped her head up and shouted at Yoshi angrily, "It's _my_ power, and it's not lame!" With her bit being said she ducked back down to check over the wounded Tatsuki, "Aren't you glad to see me?"

Despite the loss of blood and the pain, Tatsuki was used to taking enough of a beating when training with people like Hidan to stay conscious for as long as possible, "You're that Mod Soul… the one that was in the bird plushie. How'd you get in an actual body?"

"I fell out of Ichigo's bag when he was running off to find a place to leave his human body, so I ran back to Mother Base as fast as I could in that stupid bird doll and switched into my Gigai." Ririn said with a smile, "I ran into the Shinigami on the way to the closest Bount I could sense that wasn't already being handled by someone that didn't need the help… lucky you." She frowned when she looked at Tatsuki's wound, "I'm not any kind of healer though. Come on. Let's get you out of here."

Tatsuki shook her head, "No." She tried to use Ririn to help her stand up but sank to her knees holding her bleeding shoulder, "I want to stay to the end. If I'm running away even when there's help around then what am I good for? I'm still leagues behind… everybody. We can still fight."

Instead of outright agreeing, Ririn waved her hands in front of herself and took a few steps back, "I'm not much for direct fighting. I'm kind of a support kind of role player. I have the illusions and I'm kind of fast and that's about it." Tatsuki palmed her face with her bloody hand before blinking with a red-stained face and realizing what she did.

Meanwhile, Rangiku and Yoshi had pushed each other away, holding their weapons at the ready to keep fighting, "I can't believe Rukia found me… and I thought no one would ever find me while I was shopping. Shuuhei didn't even try looking for me." She let out a sigh at having to fight, "I guess it's necessary though. Order or not, it's not really the right thing to do to let you just kill someone like that."

"Well let's see just what you can do." A swing of Yoshi's fan sent bladed projectiles from the tip of her fan at Rangiku, missing her as she used Shunpo to dodge. Unfettered by the miss, Yoshi whirled around and lashed out with a slash of her sword only to meet Rangiku's again, both women knocking each other back once more, getting a scoff out of Yoshi, "To hell with this." She said before reverting Nieder into its offensive form, "It's time to see what you Shinigami really have to offer."

Rangiku shrugged and grabbed the wrist of her sword arm with her other hand before drawing it down the length of her Zanpakutou's katana blade, "Unare, Haineko (Growl, Ash Cat)!" The blade of Rangiku's weapon turned into ash. If she wanted to fight a released Zanpakutou that was no skin off of Rangiku's nose.

The eyes of Yoshi widened upon seeing the ashen form of her Shinigami opponent's Shikai. With the gesture of her hand, it rushed towards her and Yoshi went into her defensive form, opening the large fan to block the oncoming waves of ash.

"That wasn't a good idea." Rangiku said in a chiding tone of voice, confusing Yoshi until from the sides of the fan, ash came crashing past, "You really don't want any of Haineko to get around or behind you. It just doesn't end well."

True to Rangiku's words, a few clumps of Haineko's ash managed to reach around Yoshi's defenses and cut into her side, sending blood flying, "What is this? Ash doesn't cut anything!"

"It's not normal ash if you were paying attention." Rangiku said, moving her hand to manipulate the dangerous ash, "Each particle is like a tiny blade, so a whole bunch of them, enough to make a force, it'll definitely cut you. Your defense is tough, but it's too straightforward to deal with a tricky Zanpakutou ability."

'You've got to be kidding me!' The fan wasn't an all encompassing defense. It really only stopped all attacks from one direction. Tatsuki couldn't work her way around it because she was as fast as Yoshi and her quickest attack would only be as fast as she was. That was a speed that Yoshi could adjust to and overcome with the large fan. Rangiku's Shikai was easily able to out maneuver her though, as it could just push around the fan, 'Damn!'

The deadly ash spilled past the fan and violently tore Yoshi up as it ran over and past her body. The armor on her left arm and around her neck due to that form she was in did little to protect the rest of her body and she took the brunt of Rangiku's measure.

It was something strange for Tatsuki to see when she saw the easy-going, way too bubbly for her own good Shinigami Rangiku defeat an enemy that she literally couldn't even touch moments ago, 'So this really is a Shinigami… a god of death. Wow.'

Yoshi's legs shook as blood spilled freely from the copious amount of wounds all over her body, finally giving out as she sprayed blood from her mouth and fell to her knees, dropping her large fan, "Hah…. Hah… So that's a Shinigami lieutenant? Good to know."

Walking over to Yoshi, Rangiku's Zanpakutou reverted back to its normal katana form as she let out a sigh, "I really didn't want to have to do that. Talk about a way to ruin what was shaping up to be a good day."

"Kariya… is so stupid." Yoshi said, coughing up more blood as her body began to turn to dust, "…Picked a fight with the wrong people at the wrong time it seems." And with that she was no more.

Tatsuki limped over as the illusionary scene faded back to the park that it had been before and stood beside Rangiku as she resheathed her weapon, "Um… thanks." She said begrudgingly as she shifted her wounded shoulder in place and grimaced at the injury. As remiss as she was to admit it, it was quite clear to her that she wouldn't have survived that fight without timely intervention. It was just beyond her at that point, "I still didn't stand a chance even with the training."

Rangiku smiled cheerfully and waved off the thanks, "It's not a problem, it wasn't really that hard. You just had the wrong enemy that's all. I've seen you train, and fighting someone with a defense that you can't punch through isn't exactly your specialty. Haineko made this fight way too easy for me though. She certainly isn't complaining about it though… lazy sword."

And Rukia's words from a few nights ago hit her when she asked the smaller girl if she could possibly defeat her in a fight. She said that she could never beat a seated officer as she was, and Rangiku was supposed to be a lieutenant, 'That's a serious gap to bridge.' Yeah, first thing after she got her shoulder patched up she was jumping right back into training her tail off.

XxX

(Yoruichi vs. Sawatari)

In a blur, Yoruichi appeared, holding Kuroudo over her shoulder as he was in his rabbit purse form. She looked around with a frown on her face, "I thought you said this was where you felt his energy signature stop after that stupid whale thing took the old man away." Kuroudo's senses had led them to the western riverside of Karakura Town that separated the old industrial district from where the main parts of the town were, not too far from Mother Base.

"It is." Kuroudo assured her from his place at her hip, "I don't know why I can't sense him anymore. It's a mystery to me Yoruichi."

Crossing her arms over her chest she continued to scan the area. It didn't make any sense. The Bounts usually kept their Reiatsu to a point where no one could sense them; that was what made having the Mod Souls so important, so why couldn't Kuroudo sense anything on the guy? He was simply not that fast, not faster than her, even with his giant whale-looking doll.

Bounts were incredibly annoying. She was supposed to be the best at stealth. Well she couldn't really sneak up on anyone if she didn't even know where they were. If this old guy got the drop on her somehow she was going to be so pissed off… because she knew that he didn't just run away, and there was still Shuuhei at Mother Base to make sure Orihime was alright if Naruto took the initiative and asked him to do just that.

'Did he retreat across the river?' Yoruichi thought to herself, looking in just that location, wondering if the man's doll had some kind of super long-range attack that would need that kind of distance to work. This was not the case, because from the water, seemingly emerging from another dimension, Sawatari's rock covered whale launched from the water with its mouth open directly towards her.

A surprised look was on Yoruichi's face before in the blink of an eye she got her wits about her and dodged with her extreme speed, allowing the whale to miss her and land on the ground… or else it would have had it not seemingly disappeared into the ground without disturbing a thing.

Yoruichi reappeared on the top of the slope overlooking the riverside having seen what had just occurred, "Why didn't you let me know he was attacking?" She asked Kuroudo, "I can't have you losing your focus at a time like this just because you're riding shotgun."

"I didn't sense him at all until he appeared and attacked!" The Mod Soul said, defending itself, "It was like he didn't even exist until right then!"

That was just no good. So she'd just be dodging attacks all afternoon without knowing where they were coming from at all? What a test for reaction time, "So whenever you feel his presence just tell me anyway, and the direction too if you know where." Yoruichi requested, opting to work with what she had at the moment instead of complaining about it.

The order being given from the former 2nd Division leader, Kuroudo focused on finding Sawatari, but he was unable to find even the slightest dregs of his energy. It was like he had just vanished altogether. It was maddening, "Behind you!" Kuroudo finally yelled as the massive whale suddenly appeared with its mouth open to try and devour Yoruichi whole.

Yoruichi ducked underneath and avoided the creature narrowly before delivering a nasty uppercut to its sizeable body, sending it flying into the air from the raw strength that she possessed. Upon feeling her fist sink somewhat into Sawatari's doll's stomach easily than she expected, Yoruichi grinned, 'This thing's underside isn't that well protected. It looks like I won't have to go that far with my powers to win.'

Kuroudo brought forward another point as the doll stayed in the air, "Look! It isn't just jumping into its other dimension like it has been! It needs a surface to do it!"

Cracking her knuckles at that bit of information, Yoruichi crouched down and prepared to jump up into the air, "Well I don't think there's anyone that can beat the stuffing out of something in mid-air better than me, so let's see just how much of an asskicking this thing can take!" Eager to finish the fight, Yoruichi vanished with Shunpo and reappeared to deliver a hard kick to the doll.

"**Boss…"** The large doll said as Yoruichi's kick blasted it in the belly, **"I can't…"**

Yoruichi started blasting the whale creature back and forth with punches and kicks. If one were to watch the scene from the ground it would look like the largest pinball bouncing between bumpers ever created. From his safe place concealed by his doll's rock scales on its back, Sawatari could feel his control over the doll slipping with each shot it took, 'Damn you Shinigami! If we had the Bitto… if we had the Soul Society's Reishi to draw upon… you would never have gotten to use this weakness against Baura.'

But Yoruichi couldn't hear his thoughts, nor would she have cared if she was able to. She had her advantage and she was going to work it over for all it was worth with her nonstop barrage, 'It's just a matter of time now. He can't take this for long, it doesn't matter how durable this thing is.' And true to form, Baura's body began to crumble. With one more authoritative kick the entire frame of the doll broke, exposing Sawatari who had been covered by Baura's rock scales for protection.

Zeroing in on his form, Yoruichi channeled every bit of power she had to deliver one stiff axe kick right to the old man, "Taketonbo (Bamboo Dragonfly)!" The kick shot him like a bullet right out of the sky into the ground by the side of the river, shattering the earth with the impact the move generated and leaving a large impression in the ground.

Yoruichi landed on the ground right by the hole she had just made and looked inside to see Sawatari turning to dust before her eyes, glaring up at her hatefully. She didn't say a word as his body finished changing and merely walked away from the scene now that the battle was over.

XxX

(Chad vs. Koga)

All of that training trying to break Gaara's toughest mineral defense was invaluable, but Chad still couldn't smash through Dalk. It just wasn't happening. And the metal woman humanoid thing moved fast enough to keep him from openly attacking Koga with a spiritual blast of his own.

With a laugh, Dalk shot off several sickles comprised of her own metal body at Chad. In response, Chad used his armored right arm to punch the ground and kick up large chunks of asphalt in the form of a defensive wall around his entire body to block the weapons. After the barrage stopped, the wall was felled with another massive blast of spiritual energy in Koga's direction, but true to her master, Dalk once again intervened and took the hit with her durable body.

However much to the surprise of the Bount and the doll, Chad somehow had gotten close to Dalk using his blast as a feint. He grabbed the deadly walking weapon tightly and quickly turned towards Koga before yelling in great effort, hurling Dalk directly at him with all of his strength. Even as he lifted Dalk he noted how heavy she was. Even if she put her weapons away in mid-flight she would still deal crippling damage to Koga when she hit him.

But instead of showing fear at Dalk being thrown at him, Koga just smirked. The burly man stood in place as right before Dalk would have hit him she simply turned into numerous metal spheres the size of ball bearings, missing him altogether and making Chad's strategic attack null and void. But when he saw Chad directly in front of him he was forced to put his arms up defensively as the teen of Mexican descent had managed to get close enough with no Dalk about to deliver a punishing blow to Koga.

The punch easily sent Koga flying across the parking lot to smash into an iron fence, deeply denting it with his entire body. He fell out of the impression in the gate and landed on his knees, blood coming from his mouth due to how hard he hit the gate. Chad prepared to follow up with a distance blast of spiritual energy, but one of the small ball bearings that Dalk had turned into hit him in the head.

Chad recoiled from the bloody knot that was quickly forming on his head only to take another shot from another ball bearing in the stomach. Soon enough his entire body was taking a beating from the metal balls that seemed to swarm all around him, and Chad wound up using his spiritual blast to get the metal away from him so that he could get away.

Bruised and bloodied somewhat from the beating along with the wound he had earlier sustained from Dalk's blades, Chad stepped back as Koga got up and Dalk reformed her normal body, "Dalk can do anything she wishes with her body. Even in multiple pieces like you saw she can move each part of herself effortlessly. You can't win young man."

"I'm not quitting." Chad said with complete conviction in his stern and sturdy voice, "I can't let the Bounts continue to hurt innocent people by taking their souls. I don't think I'll lose, bu even if that's the case I still won't run." He held his right arm out showingly, "This arm of mine is meant to protect people, and that's what I'll do."

'That's a strong, responsible attitude to have.' Koga thought to himself before shaking his head, 'If only I had been able to steer Cain to a similar belief.' But there was no reason to think of that at the moment. He had a job to do. This Sado Yasutora had to go down whether he himself liked it or not, "I stand with my brethren. We're the only ones that the other can rely on in the end. You humans don't care. The Shinigami would rather we just vanish… it's all we have."

Instead of trying to convince him otherwise, Chad just nodded, "I understand. I guess this isn't going to be settled any other way." He was about to prepare a spiritual blast in his fist until he noticed that all of the cars he had been using for cover against Dalk up to that point were overturned, knocked too far away, or were no longer in any condition to stop any kind of attack from the walking can-opener.

"And you have no more protection." Koga said as Dalk sent off some more ball-formed pieces of her body to batter Chad from a distance. He would try not to kill the boy. He despised killing younger enemies. It just never sat well with him and he avoided it whenever possible.

The barrage of metal flew at Chad and he began to dodge, but they just kept following after him, catching up to him steadily. It wasn't going to take long for them to blat into him again.

Until a red field of energy came between Chad and the metal and a figure that emerged from it held up a blue shield that then became enshrouded in a similar red field and forced the metal balls to disappear without a trace. Before anyone could realize what happened, a red field appeared behind Koga and the metal balls flew out and slammed into him from behind, knocking him to the ground, **"Koga!"** Dalk said in alarm as she had no idea of what had just occurred.

Chad stopped running and turned around to face Noba, blinking upon seeing him back in his Gigai, remembering that the last time he had seen him that morning he had been in the plushie that was used to disguise the strange looking Mod Souls, "Noba… how did you get back into your Gigai?"

"I could sense all of the fighting, so I ran to change and teleported here." Noba said, watching through his zippered mask as Koga stood back up off of the ground, "I think I picked the right fight to jump into."

A nod came from Chad as he was thankful for the support, "Well I'm glad you chose this one." The two men of few words stood at the ready to continue fighting against Koga and his doll partner, "You do know how they fight, don't you?" Noba nodded and it seemed like nothing more needed to be said between them. It seemed like Noba had a plan of action to take against them, and his powers would more than protect Chad now that he was there.

Koga stood up, shaking the cobwebs off from the forceful impact of his doll's sturdy metal, "I'm fine Dalk. But make sure you don't hit that shield of his when you attack again."

"**I've got it."** Dalk said confidently before breaking into a massive amount of metal balls again that began flying around the whole parking lot. Chad and Noba ducked and jumped around to avoid the attacks, but they soon found themselves entirely surrounded by every bit of metal that comprised Dalk, seeming to take aim at them all before slamming inward all at once to crush them, **"Take that!"**

Noba quickly formed another portal and threw himself and Chad into it just as the ball bearings all slammed together, making a horrible clacking and clanging noise as they did so.

Another wormhole opened up and out of it came Noba, only for Dalk's combined metal to fly at him in one complete metal ball as he flew out of his own dimension. The ball slammed into him and propelled him across the ground, but there was no Chad to be found.

Instead of emerging from Noba's point of exit, another wormhole opened up behind Koga that Chad flew out of with his armored right arm already cocked back and ready to strike.

The extensions on the end of the armored arm's shoulder opened up like an exhaust port, spurting out power as he delivered a powerful punch right to Koga who had turned to face him after feeling the sudden influx of Reiatsu from Chad's buildup. Without Dalk there though, there was nothing in particular that he could do to protect himself from Chad's super-charged attack.

"El Directo (One Strike of the Giant)!"

The punch hit Koga and let off a three-pronged burst of power that split off and then reconvened on the center prong to force a rather large explosion that rocked the entire parking lot.

Dalk could feel the amount of pain that Koga was in from the successful sneak attack and immediately made to rush to his side, **"Koga, no! You have to be al-!"** Dalk was stopped when Noba got in front of her during her dash to Koga and made sure that she flew completely into a wormhole before closing it off. There was no return portal made as he simply locked her inside of his alternate dimension, effectively ending Dalk's effectiveness in the battle… even if Koga had been in a better condition to fight.

Following the trail that had been torn through the pavement to the downed Koga, Chad stood over the prone Bount and looked down at him, "I don't like killing. And you held back against me. Why didn't you continue to use the bullets and the blades that you had been attacking with at the start?"

"Like I said..." Koga uttered softly, feeling the full effects of Chad's final attack, "I dislike killing the young. I suppose I should have kept going all out though. Even though you're young you were strong enough to take it." With that he shut his eyes and passed out.

Noba, holding his torso from the injury he suffered when he had diverted Dalk's attention, walked over next to Chad and looked down at their defeated enemies. The two of them shared a look and nodded before Chad picked Koga up and they all disappeared into one of Noba's portals.

XxX

(Meanwhile – Bount Mansion)

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!

Outside at the front door of the mansion, Urahara stood knocking spiritedly with Tessai standing at his side and with Jinta, Ururu, Nel, Dondochakka, and Pesche standing behind them holding boxes, "Hello!" Urahara called out as he continued to knock at the door, "Is anyone home?"

"**What do you want?"**

A mass of floating eyes seemed to come out of nowhere and surrounded the group, appraising them all carefully from a moderate distance.

Upon noticing that the voice had come from the disembodied eyes, Urahara blinked and put a smile back on his face as he held his fan out in front of his mouth, waving it as he spoke, "Well I like to make it a habit to introduce myself to neighbors of mine… and even though this mansion is a good ten miles away from my shop that's no reason to be discourteous, right? I love meeting new people!"

The eyes scanned the group over before the same voice from before spoke with an edge to the speech, **"…And you would be?"**

"Why I'm just a lowly but handsome merchant, the owner of a poor, small-time candy shop. Urahara Kisuke. Nice to meet you."

"Bakudou #81: Dankuu (Way of Binding #81: Splitting Void)!"

A translucent shield appeared in front of Urahara, feigning confusion as to why there was a blade that was being blocked by the barrier in front of him. The sudden blade had appeared from the darkness of the awning that the door to the house sat under, seemingly coming out of nowhere, "Huh… well that's no way to treat guests. Thank you Tessai."

"It was no trouble boss." Tessai said, adjusting his glasses on his face as the blade vanished, "What a brutish greeting. There are children here you know." He said gesturing to Ururu, Jinta, and Nel, all still holding onto the boxes in their arms.

"Yes." Urahara said in an exasperated sounding manner, "And here we came with all sorts of treats and sundry goods to say hello, to extend an olive branch if you will. Now what did we ever do to you?"

"**You're one of the most infamous Shinigami alive Urahara Kisuke. And I presume that the man with you is Tsukabishi Tessai."** The voice from the eyes said as they began to slowly swarm around the group, **"Tell me why in the world I would possibly trust you when even your Gotei 13 find you untrustworthy?"**

"We would rather solve this without anymore bloodshed." Urahara said, dropping all pretense of his goofy façade for a more serious outlook, "If you'd been paying attention to your comrades and their levels of Reiryoku you would find that quite a many of them have already been beaten. And just because you know who we are doesn't mean you know what we can do. You underestimated the right lot of us, and your strongest picked a fight with the most dangerous of us."

"**And are you speaking of Jin or of Cain when you're referring to the strongest of the Bounts?"**

At the question from what was obviously the Bount inside the mansion speaking through his doll, Urahara just chuckled and shook his head, "Oh… between who the two of them are fighting it doesn't really matter."

XxX

(Ichigo vs. Cain)

For such an underwhelming looking Bankai, Cain hadn't expected nearly what he had managed to get out of Ichigo by coaxing him into that state of combat. A skinny little black sword and a coat. Ichigo had definitely looked stronger with his Shikai instead.

Then he had actually started fighting Ichigo with Waineton and he was shocked. And not in a good way either. Before his sizeable praying mantis of a doll was overpowering Ichigo and throwing him all over the rooftop. But now that Ichigo was in his Bankai there didn't seem to be any way for Waineton to keep up with him. Her claws couldn't hit him, her blasts couldn't either.

CLANG!

And then when Ichigo did let a claw get close he could block it as if it were a normal person swinging a sword… just like right then. Ichigo's two-handed grip on his sword against one of Waineton's claws ended with him just standing against it, even though at this time Waineton was eight times Ichigo's size and still growing, "This is what you spent all those years obsessing for just to beat one guy? Instead of finding something to actually fight for all you did was get stronger to kill Naruto, and look at you." Ichigo ground his feet into the roof and shoved Waineton back with his full force, throwing the mantis through the fence on the roof and off of the building entirely. He then looked for Cain himself only to no longer see him there, "Where the hell did he go?"

Cain had left the roof and had started running through the streets of Karakura Town frantically, a wild look in his eye at the turn of events. People stared at him as if he were a crazy person, not knowing the reasoning behind his flight.

The more people Cain passed though, he began to slow down with a devious grin slowly forming on his face larger and larger. He sent a mental command to Waineton to hold Ichigo off and buy him some time, and he would make her stronger than ever.

A ways back, since Ichigo couldn't sense Cain on his own he was following the trail of people that had moved out of the way of something in the middle of the sidewalk as he pursued Cain. As he ran across a crosswalk to continue giving chase a large shadow dropped from the sky, forcing Ichigo to dodge as Waineton fell from the sky, crushing a stoplight on the way down instead of the Substitute Shinigami.

"Well there _you_ are." Ichigo said, prepared to continue fighting the large doll, "Now all I need is to find your crazy master and I can finish this." And then before his eyes, Waineton seemed to grow even larger again, towering over him further to the point of reaching around three stories in size, "Oh you've got to be kidding me."

A loud hiss came from Waineton, and unlike Ichigo, people could actually see that mammoth figure. And they fled by the droves at the mere sight at it.

Ichigo gasped at the sudden red glow of Waineton's eyes and quickly held up his Zanpakutou to deflect the energy blast with the blade of his sword. It was like a Cero from that thing's stupid eyes and it was… stronger? Most definitely stronger than the last one it had fired.

With a great yell, Ichigo managed to push the blast into the air before vanishing in Shunpo to dodge another blast, winding up hovering behind Waineton's head where he went to deliver a slash that wounded the giant, 'I've got to stop this before this thing destroys more stuff. It might actually hurt people if I don't hurry it up.' And then he saw the wound he had just inflicted on Waineton heal up right before his eyes before it seemed to grow slightly bigger again, "What the hell is going on?" Waineton turned towards the hovering boy and fired another blast that Ichigo was not about to take lying down, "Getsuga Tenshou (Moon Fang Heaven-Piercer)!"

A slash of Ichigo's sword fired off a black wave of energy with red outline that smashed through Waineton's blast and exploded off of the doll's head knocking it to the ground.

"Damn it! How much power do I have to give you to make you beat him? He's just a fake-ass Shinigami! Kill him already!"

Ichigo turned towards the direction of Cain's shout to see him standing across the intersection, and in his right hand he had a human woman held in his grasp around the neck unconscious, "Put that woman down you son of a bitch!" Ichigo shouted at him before turning to block a dual swipe of Waineton's claws, "This is between you and me!"

Cain just laughed as if Ichigo were naïve, "Sorry… I need this power. Absorbing this human's soul is gonna give me a boost. It's strange. I've gone through a dozen humans by now though and you're still fighting this well. I'm getting stuffed."

"You sick bastard!" Ichigo yelled, shoving Waineton's entire frame off into the side of a building to rush right at Cain, only to stop as Cain held up the woman right in front of Ichigo."

"Ah, ah, ah." Cain said, wagging his finger as he held the woman forward, "If you take a single step, if you even breathe out of line I'll break her neck, understood hero?" Ichigo backed down begrudgingly at the threat only to see Cain smirk ferally, "Waineton finish him off right fucking now!"

Ichigo proceeded to take the full brunt of a blast from Waineton in the side, sending him through a brick wall that ran along the side of the road. And at Cain's behest, this time with the advantage Waineton did not let up, taking all of the Reiryoku that Cain was willing to give in spades to keep blasting away through the rubble again and again.

With each shot that was fired and with each explosion, Cain laughed louder and louder at Ichigo's expense, having thrown the woman he had been using as a shield away onto the sidewalk, "You idiot! I thought your family owned a clinic! That woman was already dead! I took her soul before I ever even got here!" And just like that he felt a cold, crushing feeling overtake him from where Waineton had been shooting blasts and saw Ichigo's silhouette walking back out through the smoky haze, with not even a limp to his form.

Before he could even give the order for Waineton to attack again, Ichigo vanished from his sight and without Cain even seeing the action that resulted in it he cut Waineton vertically all up and down the doll's frame. With a pained cry, the praying mantis fell to the ground with a crash, the doll reverting back into the sealed form of a bean due to the severity of Ichigo's attack.

A stunned look stood on Cain's face until an expression of anger overtook him, "You… you're the one! You were the one all along that was weak! Calling _me_ weak! Threatening to take my life to test _my_ power! It was always you! You're pathetic!" He shouted, spraying spittle as he berated his defeated doll.

"**You're the one that's pathetic."**

Cain's eyes widened at the sound of Ichigo's distorted voice only for him to be grabbed by his throat from behind by one of Ichigo's hands. Behind Cain, lifting him off of the ground with the one arm he had on his Hollow mask with his irises being yellow and the rest of his eyes being black.

Cain clutched Ichigo's wrist tightly as his air was forcefully cut off, not even able to see his attacker, but the sheer force of his Reiatsu was enough to bring a lesser being that could feel the spiritual presence to their knees.

Ichigo just held him off of the ground, glaring at him hatefully from behind his mask as he could hear his Inner Hollow cackling at what he was currently doing to prolong Cain's suffering, **"You're just a depraved piece of crap with a little bit of power. It's like you're some kind of spoiled kid, and you were calling me the brat. It would be funny seeing someone centuries old acting like you if you didn't hurt so many people."**

All Cain could do was strain for breaths that he did not receive as Ichigo's grip got tighter and tighter. Finally he felt and could swear that he heard a crack… at least he would have if he could have made any other thoughts after that point.

The right-handed example of Ichigo's grip continued to tighten on Cain's neck until the deceased Bount's body turned to dust and floated away in his hand, leaving a pile of what used to be part of him in Ichigo's fist. Ichigo's mask broke and he let out a sigh, "45 seconds without even feeling the strain of the mask breaking. I can still go way longer with it on though." He stomped over to the bean that was Waineton's sealed form and stomped on it hard enough to leave a footprint in the street, sparing a glance over where the woman had been deposited. He couldn't have hurt Cain enough to make him pay for such wanton loss of life.

He wished he could resurrect Cain just so he could kick the shit out of him some more. He was given the Substitute Shinigami badge to protect Karakura Town from things and people like Cain. And now those people Cain had taken souls from were just gone. Their bodies didn't get those spirits back. He would never let that many people get hurt again. Not while he was supposed to be watching over that town.

XxX

(With Uryuu - Outskirts of Karakura Town)

It had taken forever, but Uryuu had finally managed to force Mabashi to a stop. It was a wonder what a few arrows could do when it came to corralling someone inside of a cave. It was a cave that was admittedly deeper than he had originally figured it to be, but he had forced the blonde Bount to a dead-end; somewhere he could corner him and finally fight him in a straight battle instead of in a pursuit.

Now in that location he could try to keep a smarter eye on that damned super-fast doll of his and take his shots accordingly. And Uryuu liked being able to pick his shots like an opponent was a fish in a barrel.

All he managed to take from that damn doll Ritz was a small wound that came in between steps when he was jumping between rooftops. A baby scratch in comparison to the wounds he had taken when in the Soul Society. And now it was time to finish things off, "I'll let you know right now that I don't exactly like taking my opponents alive. You can surrender now… but I won't be asking you again after this point."

In response to Uryuu, Mabashi just started to laugh, "Man, if this is how you Quincy used to handle things then I can see why you were all taken down. But then again Ritz is a stealthy little thing when she wants to be. Isn't that right Ritz?"

Uryuu was on guard, looking around to make sure he could dodge the next attack from the little thing, only for his lips to move and for Ritz's high voice to come out of his mouth, **"It was so boring being stuck inside of this guy doing nothing Mabashi. Why didn't you let me take control sooner?"**

"I heard that Quincies were a tricky bunch when they were around." Mabashi said as Uryuu's body started to struggle for control, "I didn't want to risk him finding a possible way to break the control before we really needed him."

Managing to find his voice again, Uryuu found a way to fight back some control, "How did you-? What did you do to my body?"

A chuckle came from Mabashi, "You didn't really think that Ritz's attack just glanced you and that was that, did you? Her power isn't to kill. It's to take control of whomever she hits during a fight." He then turned his head to yell through the cave, "Hey Maki, are you here yet?"

"I've been here the whole time." Ichinose Maki said as he appeared, standing not too far from Mabashi and Uryuu, "So this is the Quincy that Kariya-san spoke of?" He seemed to observe the teenage student before nodding to himself, "Very well. I guess we should begin."

Mabashi nodded in return and looked at the Ritz-possessed Uryuu, "I guess we should begin infiltrating and starting the next phase of things." With a gesture of his hand he forced Ritz to move Uryuu's body in the posture to fire an arrow, "You know how he does it, right?"

"**Duh Mabashi!"** Ritz said while Uryuu's body formed the spiritual energy necessary to fire his bow, **"I was in here enough to see and feel him do it like a hundred times!"**

Before he could fire the arrow, Rukia came upon them, breathing heavily from running so far so fast in an effort to keep up with the faster other two, "Uryuu stop! What are you doing?" His body was pointing an arrow at something that looked to be like a portal on the cave wall.

In order to stop Uryuu from fighting his control any further, a flower sprouted on his chest, getting a grunt out of him before his body stopped resisting completely and his eyes glassed over, "There. That's much better. Ritz, if you would."

Ritz fired an arrow while in Uryuu's body at the stone alignment that looked like a portal, and much to Rukia's alarm that's exactly what it was, causing a dimensional rift, 'They have a passage to the Soul Society?' She then took note of Maki, "What are you doing? Why are you helping them? You're a Shinigami!"

"The only reason I would care about the Seireitei or the Soul Society is to go back to kill Zaraki Kenpachi." Maki said coldly, turning away from Rukia as he began to walk towards the portal with Mabashi.

'That lunatic would actually _want_ to fight Zaraki-taichou?' Rukia thought to herself as she drew her Zanpakutou, "Stop right there!" She ordered before dodging an arrow shot at her by Uryuu, growling at the troublesome situation she had found herself in, "I don't want to fight you Uryuu."

"He doesn't have a choice." Mabashi said as he and Maki continued to leave with Uryuu keeping Rukia occupied, "Ritz, come on through when we pass over."

"Aww… you and your Bount-bitch are leaving so soon? And you aren't even going to show us around?"

The hairs on the back of Maki's neck stood up as he heard the rather bloodthirsty sounding sarcasm of Hidan and turned to see both him and Gaara striding into the cave. Hidan with a new set of blood-free clothes and a manic grin and Gaara with his normal impassive look on his face.

Rukia looked at the two new arrivals as they calmly walked in, "You two are with Uzumaki-san in that group we're here to observe." She commented before snapping her gaze back to Uryuu and he enemies before her, "These guys are-."

"We are aware of who they are." Gaara said calmly, "My associate here had a run-in with the Shinigami of the pair not too long ago." Gaara's seafoam green eyes drifted towards Hidan as if he was picking with him, "Last night to be exact. Isn't that right Hidan?"

"I hate you Sand-rat." Hidan commented absently before locking eyes with Maki, "You and I still have some business. I want my receipt for what you did the last time we met."

Rukia blinked at the timely arrival of the backup, especially since this was their concern to begin with. Still, she didn't feel comfortable with letting Uryuu fight on his own when she was around. It didn't matter now, "How did you two find us?"

"Imagine my surprise when I get back to base after Urahara's torturous medical treatments to see Uzumaki duking it out in the air with some chick and some other guy." Hidan said in explanation, "Then I see the little blonde Mod Soul girl running out from the base and Sand-rat's coming out ready to leave too. Then we just found you." He gestured his head towards Maki, "I was coming for him though. I could sense your energy."

"I cut your entire arm off." Maki said, wondering how Hidan didn't bleed out in the woods around the Bount Mansion, "How are you still alive? The bloodloss from that wound should have ended you in a matter of minutes."

Hidan cackled as he pounded on his own chest with one fist, "Because I'm immortal you sword-swinging cocksucker. You can stab me, cut me, bury me alive… but you can't _kill_ me!" Gaara rolled his eyes and decided not to bring up the fact that the statement was utterly false.

"But enough about that." Gaara said, crossing his arms over his chest impatiently, "Shall we begin?"

Mabashi looked at the two and smirked, "How about… no." And with that he and Maki dashed towards the portal and went through, "Ritz! Come on!" Upon hearing her master's voice, Ritz dashed out from Uryuu's chest through the portal as well, leaving the Quincy to collapse to the ground with Rukia rushing towards him.

Taking advantage of Rukia's distraction and the limited window that they had before the portal closed back up, Hidan and Gaara didn't miss a beat and followed right up. Both leapt at the portal and left their Gigai behind before passing through, with Hidan stabbing himself with his pike and Gaara enshrouding himself in sand from his gourd.

Rukia felt the crushing Reiatsu of their spirits being released from the human body containers for just a moment and looked towards the portal only to feel nothing as Gaara and Hidan had already passed through, 'That was them? But that felt just like the Reiatsu of a… Hollow. Or something like a Hollow.' But that couldn't have been right, could it have?

XxX

(With Hidan – Other Side of the Portal)

"What the fuck…" Hidan mumbled to himself, standing up from the crash landing he had just dealt with, "Why can't anyone else's portal ever be as stable as a Garganta? Between Uzumaki's Gedou and this shit right here someone's going to get killed jumping worlds one of these days." He was dressed in his black robe with red clouds that he wore as an Arrancar and looked around to see people staring at him, "Uh… yo. What's up?"

"Where the fuck did this guy come from?"

"I don't know, but he looks weaker than the last guy that came through here. Let's introduce him to the Rukongai… give him a District 79 welcome."

Oh… Rukongai. That sounded familiar. Wasn't that the place that Yoruichi told him and Gaara about when she told them about the Soul Society?

…Crap.

And with that, most of the crowd drew weapons and started moving in on Hidan who merely sighed and pulled his scythe from his back, "I really don't have time for this shit… but then again it's always a good time to kill somebody!" He yelled as he started radiating enough Reiatsu to bring them all to their knees. Before he could advance on them and begin tearing them asunder, Hidan then heard and saw another crash landing somewhere in the distance and decided to check it out once he felt a familiar energy that he wanted to kill more than a bunch of powerless weaklings, "Oh, nevermind. Later." And he disappeared right in front of their eyes.

XxX

(With Gaara – Along a Riverbed in the Soul Society)

Dressed in a white robe that covered his arms and legs and a beige scarf around his neck that went with his Arrancar form, Gaara could just feel the Reishi that filled the air. Just being in this place made him feel stronger than he did in the living world. Yeah, this was definitely the Soul Society. He could see why Hollows tried to go there despite the danger… and due to said danger he needed to get the hell out of there in a hurry.

Still, he had a job to do. Failure for a Sunagakure ninja was not an option, and even though he wasn't a ninja any longer that mindset persisted with Gaara as he faced off against a confident looking Mabashi, standing on the other side of the river, that hadn't even bothered to run from him anymore. Apparently the Bounts got stronger there as well, because Mabashi was surrounded by a multitude of Ritz, the doll having multiplied many times.

"Very well." Gaara said, spinning his halberd with the blade in the shape of Shukaku's claw before holding it steadily in a ready stance to face off with his enemy, "Let's make this quick. I need to find my friend and get us home before we get ourselves killed."

* * *

**Chapter done, but oh wait… what is this? Is it-? Can it possibly be? Yes, it is! Another chapter. Double-header for your troubles!**

**I could have put this out on Wednesday, but I really wanted this all to end… that and the cut off point came when I was ready to write way more so instead of lumping it all into a 20k plus chapter I split it into two. So… in order to try and make up for the prolonged delay that came due to life not giving a damn about your down time, here you go. Another chapter.**

**Enjoy, and that will be the end of the Bounts raising trouble in this story. So later everyone, Kenchi out.**


	25. Hands of Iron, Heart of Hostility

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach… attention dear, respected readers!

Double-header part two!

*ahem*… that is all ladies and gentlemen.

(I hope you didn't just click on the arrow to the right of the story title to take you to the latest chapter… because I put two out at the same time. Cheers.)

**Chapter 25: Hands of Iron, Heart of Hostility**

* * *

(Gaara vs. Mabashi)

"Ritz, go!" Mabashi shouted as all of the little mice-sized figures went right at Gaara, who was ready for a fight and vanished in a boom of Sonido. The little Ritz dolls skittered all over the area trying to hit Gaara who was keeping out of their way with his speed, "You're pretty fast." He then grinned as he saw the copies of Ritz hit Gaara and get into his body, "Not fast enough though."

"Thank you." Without mercy or warning, Gaara smashed Mabashi from behind with the pole of his weapon, sending him flying and sliding through the ground from the impact of the attack, "And I may not be the fastest, but I'm more than quick enough to deal with you."

Blood poured from the back of Mabashi's head as his vision was swimming. He stood back up, glaring at Gaara, "Ritz is inside of your body! You shouldn't be able to do anything!"

Gaara merely pointed to the 'Gaara' that had been hit repeatedly with all of the copies of Ritz only for that one to turn to sand, with the flowers representing the possession by Ritz sticking out of it.

With his hand wide open, Gaara suddenly clenched it shut, "Sabaku Sousou (Sand Waterfall Funeral)!" The sand construct of Gaara seemed to implode and crush all of the flowers sticking out of it before the sand floated back to the tip of Gaara's pole weapon to reform his halberd's blade.

While he had been dealing with Ritz, an angry Mabashi got directly behind Gaara and attempted to punch him, actually making contact with the back of Gaara's head, putting a grin on his face until he felt his punching hand throbbing from the impact, "What in the world? What is your head made of, cast iron?"

"It's Hierro (Steel Skin) actually." Gaara said casually. Mabashi wasn't physically strong enough to hurt Gaara with his bare hands. Not a chance, "Are you aware of what an Arrancar is?" Gaara asked, getting a wide-eyed look that he couldn't see from Mabashi until he turned around to face him, "You see, you've actually picked a fight with one. And I don't like showing off particularly, but like I said, I'm in a hurry. The Seireitei, if they're any good would know that we're already here. And I literally won't be caught dead here by them."

The raw Reiatsu began to pour off of Gaara to the point that a wispy yellow aura was visible. While not visually imposing, the feeling of the oppressive power was what mattered. Mabashi backed away before dozens of copies of Ritz formed all around him, "Ritz! Kill him now!"

They never go quietly. And here Gaara was hoping to just capture him. Oh well. Placing a hand over one eye, the dark ring on the other one that adorned them both began to glow red, "Goodbye Bount." He said as all of the little dolls began to attack him, "Cero (Hollow Flash)."

XxX

(Elsewhere in Soul Society)

It was a good thing that Maki looked enough like a Shinigami to walk around outside amongst townspeople. The fact that he had landed outside of an actual village let him just waltz on in and walk around. Now that he and Mabashi were there he needed to use whatever confusion that he and his Bount partner had dredged up to lay low for long enough to find some allies of some sort for Kariya's plan to sidetrack the Seireitei with a rebellion.

Again, something that should have been easy enough since he looked like a Shinigami with a chip on his shoulder and the further away from the Seireitei one went the more likely one would be to find souls with chips on their shoulders for the lack of attention and protection that they were given by the capital.

"Found you Bount-bitch!"

Not even having the time to bristle at the remark from the insufferable brute he knew had referred to him as such, Maki had his Zanpakutou drawn to block against Hidan's strike, only this time he struggled as he was outright overpowered. Getting a glimpse of Hidan he was dressed differently with a necklace looking growth of bone in the shape of an amulet around his collarbone and a black robe with red clouds on it, open to show his chest.

…And on the left side of his chest there was a Hollow hole in the shape of his heart.

"What are you?" Maki tried to shout as people gathered around at a safe distance to watch the fight. That was a mistake, as Hidan's outpouring of Reiatsu began to visually affect the people around the two combatants that were weak, "Are you a Hollow?"

"Close enough!" Hidan shouted before he began to charge forward and drive Maki backwards with brute force as he gleefully pushed him through the wall of a side building. He then jumped out straight through the roof of the building, cackling as he landed on the structure, "You know you're not dead, so stop hiding and come on out and fight! Go ahead and try that Zanpakutou shit again and see what happens!"

"Kouka Hirameke, Nijigasumi (Shine Brightly, Rainbow Mist)!"

"That's more like it!" Hidan yelled as a bright light flashed out of the hole in the roof and every visible way into the building. From behind Hidan he lashed out, seemingly randomly with his scythe until the sound of metal clashing sounded out, "You can't hide from me anymore. I can almost smell the energy wafting off of you from your fruity little invisibility trick."

Right in front of Hidan, Maki reappeared with a pronounced frown on his face. This was the same man he had fought the previous night? He would have known if he had been fighting a Hollow as he would have been able to sense it, but now it was a wonder how he ever missed it. No wonder he was such a bloodthirsty savage.

Still, he seemed cognizant were it not for the sheer lunacy he portrayed openly, "You're standing in the way of justice. Why would a Hollow even care about the Soul Society anyway? One would figure that if any kind of creature would desire a change of things it would be one like you."

"I don't care about this place." Hidan admitted as he glared at Maki, a distinct change from the way he had been fighting before, as if trying to kill Maki made him happy, but actually addressing him got him upset, "I don't care about the Shinigami or whatever blood feud Hollows have with them. And I don't care about your justice or anyone else's. I just care about myself you see. And Hidan's justice says that whoever I want dead… dies!"

The two began fighting again, with Maki trying to avoid Hidan's swings outright while attempting to parry and counter, but Hidan's dexterity with his scythe was simply unnatural.

As they fought and clashed weapons, Hidan continued to talk.

"I fight."

CLANG!

"I kill!"

CLANG!

"It's the only thing that I really care about, and as long as I have that I'm happy!"

CLANG!

"I'd probably be a terrible Shinigami anyway! I'm not much for protecting! I think I'm exactly what I should be as an Arrancar! I like being this way!"

'He's a complete brute.' Maki thought as he got back out of the madly grinning Hidan's long reach, 'If the world doesn't need a Zaraki Kenpachi then this person most certainly has to die as well.' His Zanpakutou formed a brilliant, blinding light and took control of the shadows that he created in the process, sending them at Hidan to attack.

But upon seeing the very first shadow move, something more or less snapped within Hidan. Probably because his last waking and living experience with living shadows ended very poorly for him. They tore up parts of his cloak upon reaching him, but his Hierro was strong and a blunt shadow simply wasn't going to bust through the defense.

Hidan let out a loud scream of lunacy at being attacked by a shadow and shot a red-covered fist right at Maki, "Bala (Hollow Bullet)!" Firing the swift blast of spiritual energy right at Maki from his fist, Hidan simply hadn't had enough yet as he saw the former Gotei 13 Shinigami narrowly avoid the attack. Hidan threw his entire scythe at Maki only to miss again and impale a blade in the rooftop.

Seeing Hidan disarmed made Maki believe he had an opening he simply couldn't ignore and used Shunpo to get close to Hidan for a shock-style speed attack, 'The fool threw his weapon!' He managed to cut Hidan, but didn't leave a mark on Hidan's actual skin, 'What is his skin made of-?' His thought was cut short when he found himself stabbed in the shoulder with a very sharp pike, "Where did you get that?"

"Heh heh…" Hidan chuckled to himself as he felt the blood run down the length of his rather unconventional weapon, "My scythe isn't my only weapon. It's just the best one to use in an open fight. Oh how I wish I could curse you right now… you aren't even worth my Resurrección."

"No… honor." Maki grunted out as he slid off of the blade and touched at his gravely deep wound.

"Honor?" Hidan said before licking some of the blood off of the pike before retracting it and sticking it back inside of his robe, "Honor is for old timers and losers. Which is a coincidence because do you know what I call old timers and losers? The walking dead… just like yourself." With a sharp tug of the cable attached to the end of his scythe, Hidan yanked his primary weapon out of its lodging and back into his hand, arming himself once more.

'No mercy… no honor or values… just like Zaraki!' Maki angrily thought as his Reiatsu began to spike at how similar he felt Hidan and the object of his hatred were. With a swing of his Zanpakutou, a blade of light formed and flew right at Hidan, forcing him to duck and lose some of his silver hair in the process. This irked him as he sincerely missed not being able to die from such a thing.

A flash of light from Maki's Zanpakutou hit Hidan in the eyes and blinded him as he attempted to swing his weapon at his foe. The missed strike resulted in Maki slashing repeatedly at Hidan again and again, pressing his advantage against the visually-impaired Arrancar.

Lifting his arm to defend himself from the strikes, the sleeve of his robe got destroyed, but the concentration of Hidan's Reiryoku was enough to keep him from taking wounds, irritating Maki into striking at him harder and harder until his blade broke on Hidan's shoulder.

Hidan felt the metal give way and smirked, lashing out with his scythe and cutting the attempting to retreat Maki across the chest, drawing much blood from him.

"You're a monster." Maki said, looking at his broken sword and glaring heatedly at Hidan. He tried to retreat with Shunpo in order to comprise a plan, but his first step wound up with Hidan appearing right in front of him using Sonido, "Why does a beast like you get so much power just given to it? You aren't stopping me here." Light reformed the broken blade as he held it in a ready stance to continue battling Hidan.

Admitting to himself that such a move was a nice trick to have up one's sleeve, Hidan started waving his scythe around testingly and took a step forward before multiple twinkling lights surrounded him, "What the fuck is this shit?"

"You're not stopping me." Maki repeated as the lights grew more intense and began to expand outward rapidly. He jumped out of its range with a Shunpo as the light began to form a huge sphere around Hidan, "I'll see you in hell. Saigyoku Nijigasumi (Swallowing Orb of Rainbow Mist)!"

The light sphere then quickly drew inward on itself, crushing down on everything in its center, namely Hidan, as it took out the remainder of the building that they had been battling atop as well, crushing up a huge chunk of it right in the middle.

Closing his eyes, content with the knowledge that Hidan was dead, Maki made to leave the area. He'd have to find a different place to recruit for the cause to take on the Seireitei after raising that kind of a ruckus… or then again it could be good publicity to show that much power.

"That hurt… Bount-bitch."

No way. He completely pulverized him. There was no way that Hidan had managed to walk away from such a thing. He had to be hearing things. But when he turned around, he saw Hidan standing in the wrecked portion of building, his robe now notched down to missing the entire right upper side altogether and with burn marks all over his body.

"That last attack…" Hidan started to say with his head hung low, speaking through his teeth from the burns on his body, "Was that your Bankai?" He asked with a dull purple haze emanating off of his body.

Maki redrew his Zanpakutou and faced down his durable foe, no longer thinking about how he survived, but wondering about how in the world he was possibly going to finish him, "I haven't achieved my Bankai yet."

Hidan let out a grunt of understanding, "Well then I guess I should say I'm sorry, because you're not going to get it at all if that's the case. I'm going to kill you right here, right now."

Despite Hidan's threat and the low and dangerous tone of his voice, Maki scoffed at him in return, "Look at yourself. You're a mess. A good gust looks like it could knock you over right now."

"Well why don't you go ahead and 'knock me over' if you think it'll be that easy?" Hidan said, holding up his scythe once more, "Because I'm coming right for you. Stop me if you can."

Any opponent still standing was a dangerous one, and Maki knew this, but Hidan's face and body language showed that he was completely serious at heading right for him with everything he had. Returning fire with anything less than his best would be not only an insult, but a fool's endeavor. As he fully flexed out his Reiryoku and charged forward to meet Hidan he realized something though.

He had made a serious miscalculation.

And then the two met in one final clash that managed to destroy the rest of the building they had been fighting on. Feeling Hidan's still towering and climbing Reiatsu despite the previous notion that he had already been showing off all that he had, Maki subconsciously backed off. Hidan did not.

And once again, Maki's Zanpakutou broke, only this time it wasn't from Hidan's defense, it was from his offense, and behind that offense came an absurd amount of power that cut Maki diagonally from front to back.

Blood spurted freely from the mortal wound as he was cut from shoulder to thigh on the opposite side and the dark-haired man fell backwards on the wreckage of the roof and did not move again.

Hidan's breaths began to slow down now that the adrenaline began to die off and a cool-hand smirk made its way to his face as he stared down at Maki's corpse, "What? Are you telling me you can't take a little baby scratch like that? I did just last night. Go to sleep Bount-bitch." Beginning to grin widely, Hidan took the blood coating his weapon's blade and drew the symbol of Jashin before pulling out his pike and stabbing himself in the torso, falling to the ground in the symbol as if he were dead.

He lay there even as a set of footsteps reached him and a shadow in the setting sun passed over him, "Having fun down there?" Gaara's voice asked, getting Hidan to open his eyes and scowl at the former Kazekage, "You do realize that by now the Shinigami will be on their way here in droves don't you?"

"They ain't getting here before I'm done with my ritual. Give me twenty minutes and then we can leave." Hidan said, remaining on the ground with his body twisted in a lifeless position, "Now fuck off for a bit and go make some sand castles or something."

Gaara shook his head and proceeded to open a Garganta in the sky before drifting up to leave, "Right… well I'm going home. If you don't catch up in Hueco Mundo in thirty minutes I'll assume you were either captured or killed." Hidan made a gesture of his hand to tell Gaara to buzz off, staying on the ground as Gaara left through the Hollow portal.

"Pssht. No way any Shinigami makes it here this far out anytime soon."

XxX

(Karakura Town – Abandoned Industrial District – Naruto vs. Kariya Jin)

Tornadoes were once again chasing after a terribly grimy and filthy Naruto all over the site of their battle, "I don't get why you just don't kill Yoshino. It would be so much easier Naruto! You always did look at doing things the hard way!" A very beaten up Kariya yelled at Naruto as his wind manipulation came into play.

"Nothing worth doing is easy!" Naruto replied, shouting over the sound of the wind as he stood atop a light post as the tornadoes closed in on him from three sides, "If my first response to any problem was to kill it then I really wouldn't be the same person I was when we met! You should know that! But if you have enough determination, enough time, and you know what you're doing-!" Naruto formed five Kage Bunshin in the air just as the tornadoes seemingly collided with him, giving him enough wiggle room to escape the breadth of the attack and slip behind the floating Kariya in the air, "-You can do anything!"

"You're right about one thing." Kariya said as a crackling noise escaped his wind sword and the blade turned to one of lightning that he lashed out at Naruto with, missing him, but tagging him with some stray static, "With enough time, anything is possible."

'He's got a sword of lightning too.' Naruto thought to himself with a frown, "Of course you have to bite my style. And why wouldn't you? Just why are you doing this crap _now_? You didn't seem like a scheming sort of guy back when we met. You had ideals of your own… and you believed that we could get peace."

"I believed that I could get peace. That much is true enough." Kariya admitted calmly as if he were thinking back to such a time before his red eyes hardened and seemed to age right before Naruto's gaze, "But you've seen it just like I have. Clearly you have because I haven't heard any rumblings of your attempts to 'help the world' in over fifty years. Peace is a myth. It's not real. The only thing that is real is you and I, and the ambitions that we have are only as concrete as their literal tangibility. A dream we can touch. And I can _touch_ the destruction of the Seireitei. I can see and feel and taste the crowning and the revenge of my kind against the Soul Society and humankind in general."

"We were friends Eugene…" Naruto said, a sad look reflecting in his ripple pattern blue eyes, "It doesn't have to come to this, does it? Ten years. I knew you for ten years back then before I ran and we worked together for the same cause. You believed in it back then. I'll admit that I've changed the way I try going about it, but I'm still trying." He then saw Kariya shake his head in the negative, "What do you mean, no?"

"Maybe at first." Kariya said, "When we first started working together and I saw some of your abilities and how sincerely you believed in your cause I believed myself, but I had already been alive for centuries at that point. I've seen the ways of both worlds. Even if you managed to settle things on this world, once the discovery of those with unique abilities like ours came forward there would be a witch hunt amongst those that were deemed peaceful. However, when I found that you had discovered a Bount, imagine my surprise."

That had been bothering Naruto. If Yoshino hadn't reached out to him about her special circumstances then why did she go to someone else that she hadn't even met before about it? It had to be the fact that he went to her about it. There would have been no other foreseeable way for him to get her.

"How in the hell did you get Yoshino to join up with you?" Naruto wondered aloud, "And how did you ever even figure out that she was a Bount?" Yoshino was very good at keeping that a secret if Naruto hadn't suspected a thing the entire time.

"It was fairly easy to sense one of my own." Kariya said, "I knew who she was from past visits to your base of operations at the time. You were there for years, I had plenty of time to confirm the fact that she was the Bount. I saw her absorbing a soul of the deceased and knew for certain. At that point I had more interest in her than you since I also knew that you were not a Bount. But she was completely enamored with you and would never have listened to anything I said. So I had to get you out of the way to set up a meeting to reveal myself to her."

Get him out of the way. There wasn't any explanation needed for Naruto. Kariya stooged to the Prussian court on Naruto's whereabouts and forced him to leave to get to Yoshino, "Why… why would you even tell me that?" There wasn't any advantage for Kariya to tell him that. There wasn't any reason at all to do so except to make Naruto feel stupid for trusting in him.

"You can't be angry." Kariya commented, observing Naruto's eyes being shadowed by his bangs and his lowered head, as well as his fists shaking at his side, "Naruto when I finally approached her it was several years after you had fled the country. Your disappearance was the last straw as far as she was concerned. After centuries of loneliness she had lost the will to live and I simply gave it to her again. Something better than pining after someone that would never have her."

Their midair conversation could be heard by one person from below. A motionless Yoshino, now awake but without her sealed doll, was able to hear every word now that the winds from Kariya's constant attacks to break Naruto down had faded.

Naruto's mouth moved around in angry motions before finally settling in a slight frown, "Okay Eugene. Last chance. Back down right now, or I won't give you a choice again. I don't like fighting friends, but I've done worse things to people closer to me than you were." Did he tell him about how he ousted him to the Prussian military so that he would finally just fight? A betrayal from 250 years ago didn't sting a badly as Naruto thought it would have since it had been a while, but this was more than far enough.

"We're too far gone to back down now Naruto." Kariya replied, holding up his sword and building his power to the point where he began to radiate red, "I somehow always knew it would come to this when I first saw you in action all those years ago. I never realized the depth of your powers though. I wonder how much power I could gain by taking your soul."

"You still don't know how strong I am… you never did." He took that previous statement as his old friend's final answer to his query. And with that, Naruto formed two clones and lifted his right hand above his head, forming a Rasengan as the two clones added chakra to it, "No one does." A light but visible shuriken-like outline began to take over the Rasengan as a bell-like screech began to emit from it as well.

Kariya lifted his lightning sword up and called down a strike of electricity to hit his sword, giving his entire body a powerful charge of visible yellow power that shot off random jolts that cracked concrete and pavement, turning it to rubble when it hit something, "Blitzkonzert (Lightning Concerto)!" He rushed directly at Naruto with the full force of his attack driving him.

If he hadn't been about to kill someone, Naruto would have smiled at that point. He couldn't have been given an easier target to aim at, 'For someone that used both elements, he never looked for the weakness…' Naruto dispelled his clones and let the wind-based jutsu fly directly at Kariya, "Fuuton: Rasenshuriken (Wind Release: Spiraling Shuriken)!"

The Rasenshuriken with its powerful wind coating cut through Kariya's lightning shell with a terrible grating noise before the impact of the jutsu hit its mark. It resulted in a large sphere of wind forming in the air that freely shredded absolutely everything caught within. Through the visible vortex of wind blades, Naruto was able to see Kariya's body take the visible damage, with small cuts forming all over his body, his mouth held open in a yell of pain that made no sound.

Eventually he fell out of the vortex from the sky and to the ground with an audible thud.

Naruto didn't say a word, he just rubbed his eyes and wiped the trail of red on his hand that came from them onto his pants as he walked his way over to where his adversary had fallen. As he walked up to Kariya he could see the man on his back looking at him weakly, "You're crying blood. I would hope that isn't for me."

"It happens every time I finish using Rinnegan." Naruto explained, turning Sage Mode and his powerful eyes off since he could see the lifeforce that was no longer rampant in his enemy, "It just varies from my eyes watering to bleeding from every hole in my face depending on how hard I fight." He simply sat down on the ground well within sight of Kariya and decided to watch him until he expired, "Damn it Eugene…"

"Save it Naruto…" Kariya said with a shallow breath, "I don't need to hear your whole hero's spiel about how it didn't ever have to be this way and how we could have fought together. I've heard it already, so unless you added something to your sales pitch over the last 200 years I don't think there's anything you can say to me that I'll care too terribly about this time around." That managed to get a smirk and a snorting snicker out of Naruto. Silence drifted up between them until Kariya took one last deep breath, "You're never going to stop fighting. I'll tell you that right now. I'm sure you already knew that though. Don't let yourself fall prey to time… the way we did." And with that his body turned to dust on the ground.

A sort of peace settled over the broken up portion of the industrial district. Not even the sound of Naruto's breathing could really be heard as he finished wiping the bloody tears from his eyes, remaining seated on the ground in a sort of comfort.

Naruto didn't change his face from the impassive one he had been sporting for most of the previous conversation. Making three hand-seals, he exhaled a small gust of wind and blew the dust away, watching as it drifted into the sky, "*chuckle* …You still thought you were older than me didn't you? Stupid. I didn't need you to tell me any of that." A quick presence made itself known behind him and because he was quite well acquainted with the person he let it be, "You're soooo late Yoruichi-chan. Did you really have that much trouble?"

"Bite me. Look who's talking Mr. I-like-to-fight-two-against-one. You could have asked Shuuhei for help you know. Those restrictions on Shinigami are made to be broken." Yoruichi said as she stood directly behind him, whistling at how messed up the place was, "And I thought this part of town was a dump already…" She heard him scoff and saw him turn away from her slightly to tease her, "Oh I see how it is." She said slyly, playing along with his little game, "And here I thought I was doing you a favor by getting that Bount woman out of your crossfire. Pretty negligent to throw a damn Rasenshuriken when you were fighting around others."

Oh, damn Yoshino _was_ down there on the ground. And he had the representative of her doll with him so she didn't really have a way to defend herself either. Wow, he almost really dropped the ball on that one. What with the throwing around of tornadoes and whatnot.

"Thanks Yoruichi-chan…" Naruto said, breathing a sigh of relief at the news. He stood up and dusted his pants and tattered remnants of his orange novelty shirt off, frowning at the blood and other signs of battle on his person, "But what about everyone else? I sensed fights going on before I got into mine."

"Almost everyone's back except for-." At that moment a rip in the sky appeared and two figures fell out before heading off in a certain direction, that of the cave at the edge of town, "Oh. There they go. Hidan and Gaara."

Naruto palmed his face at realizing that they were out of their Gigai before thinking about something else, "Wait. Why did they need a Garganta to get back here?"

XxX

(A Few Hours Later – Nighttime – Mother Base – Cafeteria)

"You went where?" It was almost too much. Naruto felt like slamming his head into the nearest sturdy object, but having just gotten out of a fight he would rather not be hit with anything else for a while… and somehow Orihime had remained asleep throughout the entire experience. That girl must have been absolutely exhausted. That was neither here nor there though, "Ugh… I can't even be mad because they would have gotten away if you hadn't done it… at least nobody saw you."

Neither Gaara nor Hidan, who was busying himself by tearing apart a plate of spare ribs, answered, with both of them averting their eyes from the blonde man standing by the door. This of course did not sit well with him.

A raise of an eyebrow and tone accompanied Naruto's next question, "Nobody saw you… right?"

Gaara elbowed Hidan, getting a growl out of him before he finished chewing and decided to sack up and answer, "Well I might have killed the Shinigami Bount-bitch in the middle of a town… or something. One of those district places. No big deal. I didn't kill anyone else." He went to keep eating before adding something as an afterthought, "I _did_ tear apart a whole housing project and some of the buildings around it in front of some people though."

What was a fight without a little collateral damage and an audience?

Instead of headbutting the wall like he wanted to do, Naruto simply settled for biting his knuckle to hold back a yell. After thirty seconds of that, and of Ichigo walking in to try and find a quiet place to do homework Naruto got himself back together, "Okay… did you use your Resurrección?" Both Hidan and Gaara shook their heads no, "Alright, that's something then. If nobody smart saw your Hollow hole then we're still good. You look like a human… until you start fighting."

Hidan happened to take that as a compliment of sorts instead of the insult it was meant to be and continued eating. Meanwhile Ichigo had taken a seat at another table and had started working, eavesdropping either accidentally or on purpose, no one was really sure when it came to how that kid operated, "If these two are with you what would it matter if someone found out that they were Arrancar?"

Sighing to himself and running a hand through his hair, Naruto took a seat at Ichigo's table and eliciting a perturbed look from the aspiring student as if he were asking why out of the dozen tables in the room he chose to sit at that one. Naruto gave him a challenging stare back as if to tell him to just deal with it until the two decided that trying to mad-dog stare the other would be like trying to set a brick wall on fire with eye contact.

"It matters Wonder-boy." Naruto said, leaning back in his chair with the two front legs off of the ground, "If the Shinigami figure out that Hidan and Gaara are Arrancars before I build up some damn goodwill with them I might have a touch of trouble… which means that you'll have some trouble… because I'm paying you. Speaking of which." He then slid an envelope across the table to the confused looking Ichigo.

Upon opening the wallet, Ichigo's eyes widened, "Are you serious? This is over-."

Naruto made a shushing noise and waved him down, "I know what I'm paying you. I made you train with Shinji and the Visoreds. For _weeks_. Just a single week of it kicked my ass. That counts as a mission and you get mission pay. And your Bount pay is in there too so don't thank me. Today I paid everybody." And with that he threw a pair of envelopes at Gaara and Hidan as well.

Hidan chuckled at getting his money and at the look on Ichigo's face, "So what exactly is a brat like you going to do with all of that money?" He knew that someone like Ichigo probably had never held that much money in his hand before.

Naruto laughed quietly at his own mental joke before sharing it with the others, "…Probably take Rukia out on a date or something." A hardback textbook then slapped him across the side of his head, "…Ow. Orihime?" Another slap with the book that Naruto didn't visually react to other than his head snapping to the side, "…Tatsuki?" Naruto flinched when Ichigo made to swing his scholastic weaponry again, "Come on! All of those girls are cute as hell and you actually ran off to fight an army for one of them! What does that tell you?" Maybe he should have stopped talking from the twitch in Ichigo's eye?

That book was thicker than he thought it was. Maybe he should crack it open and read it sometime? He technically was a student that got grades and everything, and he sucked at genjutsu so no hypnotizing the teacher into passing him.

"Our prisoners are awake." Gaara said to attempt to break the book-based violence that was no longer amusing him after the second hit, casually taking a sip of his coffee, "I do not see why you refused to keep them in bonds or at least under lock and key Naruto."

Hearing that bit of news from Gaara, Naruto stood up and pushed his chair in, "They don't have their dolls. They can't fight their way out even if they wanted to or had anywhere to go. I'm going to go find them and talk to them." He said as he walked out of the cafeteria. Stopping at the door, he turned back around and cracked his jaw while staring at Ichigo, "…If you're thinking about trying Rangiku kid, I think you'll burn through a lot of your money to make that one work." He then rushed out of the room to dodge the book Ichigo threw at his head.

XxX

(Training Ground)

"Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu (Fire Release: Great Fireball Jutsu)!"

A heartily patched up Tatsuki, changed into training clothes, blew out a miniscule fireball the size of a football before glaring at her work and coughing out some soot. Her lips were singed slightly due to the continued intensity of her training, but she wasn't stopping until someone kicked her out and sent her home. All she had to do was tell her parents she had been training. They knew how dedicated she was to training with her mysterious new sensei.

"Go Tatsuki-chan!" A newly awakened Orihime said, sitting and watching by the lake under a newly planted tree. How such reasonably tall trees got into the training ground that had grass and a lake already when it was once barren was beyond them, but they didn't care. It was nice. Orihime let out a yawn before continuing to speak, "That one was better this time! It didn't fly back into your face like before!"

What a sweet, proactive girl she was. The cheering when Tatsuki knew that things were going slowly was kind of annoying, but her heart was in the right place. She was a really good friend to have when doing something repetitive like that.

Tatsuki sighed and went to sit down with her friend to splash some water on her face, "Thanks Orihime-chan… but this sucks. You could outfight me now. You've got that shield that can stop anything, and a super-fast attack. I thought I was catching up to you guys."

"You're building up the fire the wrong way."

Both girls turned towards the voice and saw Yoshino standing under a different tree nearby Koga as he leaned against the same one. Seeing the two and recognizing the woman as the one that tried to kill her sensei, Tatsuki jumped up and narrowed her eyes at Yoshino but didn't get any more hostile than that. Naruto said that the surviving two Bounts were not meant to be harmed. Urahara had tried to convince one to surrender at the mansion… but he had refused and things had gotten out of hand.

Now there was no more of said Bount… or Bount Mansion either. Urahara's Zanpakutou didn't mess around when he was in fights and neither did Tessai apparently.

Still, this woman had muscled in on her training time, and Tatsuki was pretty bitchy from the day she was having, "How would you know about building up fire for a ninjutsu?"

"My doll is fire-based. I know how techniques form with that material." Yoshino said, her lips not quirking in amusement for a moment at the girl's attitude, but there wasn't much she could do. Koga either. So she simply continued on with the point she was making, "So you can either learn how to make your fireball the right way or it can keep blowing up in your face."

With an ultimatum like that, Tatsuki let out a huff and plopped herself back down on the ground with her arms and legs crossed, "I'm listening lady…"

"Good." Yoshino said in a fake-bright voice even though her face hadn't changed, "Now you need to let the fire stew and build properly. You're releasing it too early and it's not properly given time to fall under your control. If I were you, when you take the breath to let out the flame you should fully inhale like you're doing but then hold it for an instant instead of just instantly letting it go when your lungs are full."

Tatsuki snorted like a bull, but she slowly stood back up and turned towards the lake, slowly rolling through her hand-seals before going with Yoshino's advice, "Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu (Fire Release: Great Fireball Jutsu)!"

From the dark-haired girl's mouth spewed a wide jet of flames that spanned out over the water like a flamethrower. As the fire flew from her lips, Tatsuki's eyes were wide until she ran out of breath and the jutsu ceased. She immediately turned around towards Orihime with an excited gleam in her eye, "It worked! I did it! I can totally spit fire!" Orihime happily jumped up and began happily dancing with her friend on pulling off the jutsu, "Man, I don't know why Naruto-sensei didn't just give me that advice to start with!" She stopped dancing when she heard someone loudly clear his throat and looked up in the tree that Yoshino and Koga were under to see Naruto sitting in it, "Ah… Naruto-sensei. What's up?" She asked nervously.

"Oh… just listening to my ungrateful student complain." Naruto said, idly playing with a kunai in his hands, "How could I give you advice you never asked for? I only taught you that jutsu a few days ago dear." He noticed her scared expression and shook his head with a smile, "I'm proud of you though. You can ask me for help like you did with the Rasengan. When things are busy like they were it might be the only way I know you need help with something." He dropped out of the tree and landed on the ground by Yoshino and Koga, "Thanks for helping her by the way Yoshino."

Yoshino fixed her eyes on her captive and old friend with her hands on her hips, "I did it because I at least want the people that are going to imprison me forever strong enough to actually do it."

From his pockets, Naruto pulled out both the metal orb that represented Dalk, and the bracelet and finger claw that represented Goethe, "I'm not keeping you here. What's the point?"

"So you're handing us over to the Seireitei?" Koga said questioningly, "Or are you just going to kill us yourself?"

Naruto fixed the large, burly man with a confused stare before looking at Yoshino, "Who do you think I am? I thought you and Eugene would have told them better than that when you found out I was here in this town."

"Well I told them all you were a bastard of a deserter with no sense of honor or attachment, even to someone that you spent over three years with." Yoshino said, intentionally trying to grate on his nerves, but it only served to put Naruto into something of a funk.

"…To be fair, three years isn't that much time to me." Naruto mumbled, crouching on the ground with a stormcloud over his head. He heard Tatsuki snicker at him and shot her a glare, "Anyone less than one hundred years old is not a part of this conversation unless you want me to show you how to really shoot a fireball!" He turned his attention back to Yoshino who was smirking with a raised eyebrow, "Eugene snitched my location out to the military and unless I wanted to turn your village into a warzone I had to go."

Yoshino's smirk fell and she frowned at the point being made, "I know. I heard him when he told you Naruto. You know, he was actually my husband for a time afterwards. There was never really anything there though." She turned away from him and walked a few steps, "I'm not going to just forget about it. But I'm not going to apologize either."

"I'm not telling you to." Placing their respective sealed dolls on the ground, Naruto walked away towards Tatsuki, giving them one last statement to leave on, "I'm not going to kill you or give you to the Seireitei. You can go do whatever you want because your ringleader is gone. You can leave, but if I hear about you again I _will_ be coming to see you though."

Without saying another word to them that wouldn't serve any purpose, Naruto walked over to Tatsuki who had just shot off another fireball to test out that the first time wasn't a fluke, "Well now you can use a jutsu with your element." As someone that also specialized in fighting up close, Naruto could appreciate the sincere smile on Tatsuki's face at learning a move with a little range on it.

"I really wish I could take this stuff back to the dojo…" Tatsuki said, fidgeting in place at the mere thought of going back to that place to show off what she had learned, "Those guys would crap their pants if they saw just a bit of what I can do now." She would have continued, but catching sight of something behind Naruto got her attention instead.

Naruto turned around at Tatsuki's and Orihime's strange looks and he saw Koga bowing on the ground to him, "What the hell are you doing?" Yoshino wasn't even in the room anymore, having left earlier, "Yoshino isn't even here anymore."

"She's still confused… about many things. Give her some time Naruto." Koga said, still on the ground, "I on the other hand have a debt to repay to you. Two debts actually. You saved my student Cain… back before he was lost, back when there was still hope to form him into something to be proud of. And now you've spared me instead of handing me over to the Shinigami. I owe you."

Nodding, seemingly in understanding, Naruto simply blurted out his response, "Yeah, I guess I could see that… You want a job?"

Koga's head snapped up, looking at Naruto in astonishment, "A… job?"

"Yeah, a job." Naruto said cleaning out his ear before wiping it on his pants, "I need someone like you. The kids I have working with me are too young for what I need you for, so how about it? Good pay… a place to stay… I'll keep the Shinigami off of your butt if they come for you… everyone that works here seems to like it."

"You really would like it here Bount-san." Orihime tried to assure him, walking forward past Naruto and looking up at Koga with her big bright eyes, "The rooms are nice! I even thought about moving out of my apartment and staying here. And Naruto pays us really well too."

Koga was taken aback by how bright Orihime seemed to be and looked down at her, confused as to how to handle the situation. He looked to Naruto for some help only to see him grinning at Koga's seeming misfortune, "I guess… I'll see what you have to offer if you're giving me the chance. I feel Yoshino will be back here soon enough as well."

"It's her choice." Naruto said, putting a hand on the larger man's shoulder, "Just like this is yours. If you want to work here we'll be glad to have you… just don't try to pick a fight with any of us again."

To Koga's surprise, he didn't tense up from the contact. That was rare and rather unexpected, due to the fact that he hadn't trusted a human in over 150 years, which was why he had chosen to live miles away from towns in the past, "I suppose it is time I try to start anew. One more try at least."

XxX

(An Hour Later – Hotel Room)

Yoshino let out a sigh as she walked into the dark of her room and shut the door behind her, flipping on the light to find Yoruichi sitting in a chair by the bed, waving at her happily. But Yoruichi hadn't tried to kill her before she knew she was there, and Yoruichi had saved her from the backlash of Naruto and Kariya's battle earlier so she didn't want her dead, "What do you want with me now?"

"Just to talk." Holding up her hands defensively, Yoruichi kept an intuitive gaze stuck on Yoshino as she suspiciously moved around the room, trying to keep Yoruichi in sight and away from any point of advantage over her, "You left the base so fast, it was lucky I had one of our Mod Soul friends pick up your trail before he went back to Kisuke's shop."

"And why in the world would you want to talk to me?" The fact that Yoruichi was a Shinigami didn't particularly bother Yoshino as much as the fact that she seemed to have a rapport with Naruto, someone who had inadvertently jilted her in the past. It irked her a bit, though she would never admit such, "You and I don't have anything to say to each other. Nothing at all."

A sigh came from Yoruichi as she rubbed her temple at how difficult Yoshino was being, "Listen up, you're older than me so I know you don't want to hear a single thing I'm about to say, but I don't really care right now. You almost got yourself killed picking a fight with someone out of a misunderstanding. If you're just going to walk away from him now after this then you're a coward."

Now Yoshino really didn't care for the dark-skinned woman's attitude, and let her know it by fixing her with a glare, "And who are you to tell me that? My own decisions don't have anything to do with you, and if he sent you here to-."

"He didn't send me to do anything at all." Yoruichi calmly cut in, crossing one leg over her other as she sat, "If he knew I was here talking to you about this he would probably be a little upset with me, but too bad because I only listen to him when the mood really strikes me. Other than that I do what I want. And right now I want to know what your problem is." Silence permeated through the room as Yoshino crossed her arms, not answering but still shooting daggers at Yoruichi, "I see… so the problem is me."

"It makes me mad. And it isn't just you, but you're part of the problem." Yoshino said, placing a hand against the wall and turning away from Yoruichi, "He was like me. At least he was when we met. I could see how lonely he was in his eyes, he looked so hollow back then. But now I look at him and he seems content, so much more open."

'Not really that open…' Thought Yoruichi idly, but she didn't cut in and let Yoshino continue speaking.

"I thought that he would need someone the way I did, but he doesn't anymore. He has others he deems important and he has you. And I definitely saw the way _you_ were looking at him when he was fighting." She added with certain emphasis during the last part, "If you didn't think it was prudent to get me away from the battle you probably could have stood there watching him all evening." And looking Yoruichi's appearance over, it was evident that if her hunch was right Yoruichi probably wouldn't or didn't have any problem with netting Naruto like that.

A nod of agreement came from the level-headed Yoruichi, "I do care. I care a lot. More than I thought I would after only five months. And if you want Naruto to think of you as important, well he still does. He protected your life when he assuredly didn't have to. He left you with your full free will and left your life in your own hands."

"Some life." Remarked Yoshino bitterly. The sound of Yoruichi's shoes hitting the ground let her know that she had stood up from her chair and had a displeased look on her face, "You're leaving? And we were just getting to know each other." She said sarcastically.

"Yeah whatever." Having had it up to a certain point with the conversation, Yoruichi felt it was simply time to go before Yoshino got even snippier, "You can yak with your oh-woe-is-me crap. Your life was hard. Yeah, that's true, but now you have a chance to actually make it better. So if you want to just sulk by yourself until the end of time that's your business, but you've been doing that for so long and how did that work out? Even being angry and wanting revenge made you miserable." She reached the door and opened it to leave, "If you really want to be left alone we'll give you that. But if you want to stay with us we can do that for you too."

Stay with them? Since she hadn't seen Koga leave the base anytime after she did, it could be assumed that he took Equilibrium up on their offer, so would it really be a bad thing to give it a try? Before she could think too deeply about it, Yoruichi rolled a shoulder out and cracked her neck, getting Yoshino's attention, "Where are you going now?"

Rubbing her stiff neck, Yoruichi spared Yoshino a smile, "I'm going to go hang out with Kisuke for a bit, then I'm going to go see if Naruto's any good at massages because my back and neck hurt a bit. Being alive for this long had to give him some kind of useful skill outside of fighting, right?" With that she shut the door and went on her way, leaving Yoshino with much to think about.

* * *

**And that's the end of the doubleheader. I did not leave this chapter with any lingering thoughts for the next time because I figured to have something just wrap up without having a bad guy breathe right down their necks or a new problem surface immediately after just dealing with one for once.**

…**I can save that for the next chapter after all.**

**So I bid you all a fond farewell for the time being. And until the next time folks, keep on plugging ahead and keep your eyes open because life likes to hit your blindspot. I know I certainly will be myself.**

**Kenchi out.**


	26. With Time Comes More Problems

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. For those that have never read my other stories, do so, and every time you read a chapter and see a disclaimer at the top of the page take a shot. It'll be a good old time, I can guarantee it.

**Chapter 26: With Time Comes More Problems**

* * *

It had been a week or so since the final conclusive fight with the Bounts and things had settled back into a normal kind of lull. Just training, preparing, and trying to find some way to plan an excursion into Hueco Mundo for a significant operation against Aizen's army that they still knew very little about. The more time spent not knowing was dangerous. Time was a weapon for a man like that.

But as initially mentioned, it was just another day…

"Naruto…" Yoruichi's voice chimed melodically in his Naruto's ears as he fought to stay asleep. Just a little longer in bed… like seven more hours longer. He seriously did not want to wake up today. It was not going to be his day, "Naruto you need to get up now." Ugh, he usually loved having Yoruichi around in his bed while sleeping, but not at a time like this. Make like a cat and take a nap woman, "If you don't get up then you won't get to 'play' with me later." She purred directly into his ear, grinning when she thought she had him as he wrapped his arms around her to hold her close.

"…Bullshit and you know it." Naruto replied tiredly without moving or opening his eyes, "Go back to bed or go ahead and start your day Yoruichi-chan. I'm staying asleep. No school today damn it."

Yoruichi glared down at him, damning him mentally for being especially hardheaded today. It was usually a chore in of itself to force Naruto to wake up and go to school, something that despite his hatred of it and the lack of purpose it served his mind served a larger purpose of having Naruto dispatched in the middle of the spiritual hotspot that was Karakura Town in case of trouble, especially since most of Equilibrium went to school as well. There had to be somebody amongst the teens to give the marching orders in case of Hollow attack or worse and Naruto was that person.

It had been shown and proven how those kids handled problems, usually by making them worse before they solved them, again usually with assistance from others. That was what happened when amateurs despite their inherent talent tried to solve major issues between the worlds of the living and dead. Things got messed up quick.

"Come on Naruto…" Yoruichi urged, climbing underneath the covers with Naruto and straddling the immortal blonde sage in her black nightie. She was going to make him wake up damn it, no shirking of his responsibilities… that she made him have. He was an adult that was older than all of them, "Please wake up. Can you do it for me?"

"Why today?"

"What's wrong with today?" The curious tone in Yoruichi's voice couldn't be hidden from being heard. After learning of Naruto's possible troubles with the Juubi she realized that he was one to keep a few things close to the vest despite the fact that he was usually very open to those around him. That was where his two millennia of experience really started shining through as clear as day.

A life that had seen so much and been through so much knew what they wished to keep to themselves and they would defend their darkest secrets from all but the closest of their inner sanctum. Apparently Gaara and Hidan counted as inner sanctum due to the fact that they were around for when most of the troubled times occurred, and they seemed to know what they were talking about during that meeting on the roof.

"What isn't wrong with today?" Naruto said answering her question. With a frown adorning her pretty mocha skinned face at his answer, Yoruichi reached forward and yanked the curtains to his window open to reveal it to be a bright, sunshiny, beautiful early autumn day with birds chirping and whatnot, "That doesn't mean anything. That's just Kami mocking me."

Yoruichi sighed and grabbed Naruto's phone by his bed on the nightstand to check the date, "October 10th… do you have anything you're trying to duck today?" She asked outright, looking through the calendar portion to see if there was something planned. There was nothing however, "Oh you're impossible." She sat back down on Naruto's pelvis and stretched forward, pressing her lovely assets forward onto Naruto's chest and touching her nose to his before kissing him sweetly, "There's something wrong. You're never like this."

"I'm okay." Naruto assured her, running his fingers over her back softly and kissing her in reply to let her know he appreciated the attention, "It's just not my kind of day today. I can take a little bit of a rest today right? I just want a little bit of downtime."

He wasn't sick or hurt, he never got sick and he never got any lasting injury especially with Orihime around. The night before he seemed totally normal before everyone went to sleep. It was hard to tell what was what with Naruto, but he seemed off and he wasn't faking, "Alright. Everybody needs a break once in a while, even the leader of a fledgling little organization like ours." Yoruichi eventually conceded. Maybe he was just overworked?

It wasn't really outside of the realm of possibility. It was only back in May that Naruto was just travelling around doing his own thing with no end in sight, and now it was October and his head had been packed with more new information than had probably ever been placed in it in such a short amount of time. Eventually someone's mind would have to say slow down, but Naruto had adjusted amicably. A lot of it had to do with Yoruichi being his buffer and the one explaining things to him, but it was mostly him.

With that, Yoruichi climbed off of the top of him and gave him a pat on the chest before standing out of his bed and moving to head back to her own room to get ready for the day. Naruto just lay in his bed looking up at the ceiling before grabbing a pillow and pressing it directly over his own face, "Another year… and who really cares?" He spoke, the words muffled into his pillow.

XxX

(A Short While Later – Mother Base – Cafeteria)

"It's just strange." Yoruichi said to Gaara, sitting at his table while he was simply reading a newspaper with a mug of coffee nearby, "I've seen him down for maybe an hour at most, but he didn't even wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning because that would have actually required him to have gotten up first." Gaara simply let out a grunt in response, "Are you hiding something from me?"

"What would there possibly be to hide?" Gaara replied coolly before commenting offhandedly on something, "What do you think about adding on to the training room downstairs? Perhaps a waterfall or something along those lines." Ever since he first started manipulating the training ground, Gaara was sort of finding the upkeep of the room as a hobby. With all of the things he had added, grass, a large lake, trees, he seemed to have a taste for landscaping.

"Would you lay off of the additions to the training room for a bit?" Yoruichi's twitching eye went unseen as Gaara kept reading his paper as if nothing were going on, "Seriously. If you're keeping anything I need to know away from me you should just tell me."

Still, Gaara didn't budge on the matter, "There is nothing about Naruto necessary for you to know that you already don't… at least as far as I'm aware of. I haven't seen him in two millennia if you remember correctly."

And he was still keeping the whole matter of the apocalyptic creature at bay from destroying the whole world using Naruto's body as a living prison. He had said while Yoruichi was eavesdropping that it was beginning to act up, so was just another one of those situations? And if so, was there nothing anyone could do to help?

This entire thing was making her head hurt. Why the hell was a man making her think so hard? This had never happened before and it was the exact opposite of what was supposed to happen when she first enlisted his help to storm the Soul Society! He was supposed to be charmed by her, not the other way around! Bastard…

Then Gaara proceeded to continue where he had left off, "…You already know the most important thing do you not?" Yoruichi raised an eyebrow at the man with the dark rings around his eyes, "You are aware of the monster that resides in Naruto's body."

"How did you-?"

"We are not that unaware of our surroundings Yoruichi-san. Even when you were in your cat form." Gaara said evenly, slightly amused at Yoruichi's reaction though he didn't outwardly show it, "But my only question is why you never brought this forward to myself or Naruto. We would have answered your questions on the matter or addressed your concerns if you had any. But the matter of the Juubi is a rather touchy subject to Naruto. When he told me how he sealed it away it was obvious it was a story he did not enjoy telling."

"What about Hidan?"

"Yes, because when you want a logical explanation or reassurance Hidan is the person to go to."

"Touché." It wasn't even worth bringing up why Hidan wasn't the best person to talk to about anything other than the most visceral way to kill a living creature and Yoruichi had to admit that, "So is him being under the weather a sign of the Juubi or whatever you call it breaking free? Is there anything we can do?"

Gaara took a moment before lowering his paper and taking a sip of his coffee. Savoring the taste for a moment he started to lift his paper back up before noticing the date on the front of it, "Hmm. No I don't think he's sick. Naruto doesn't get sick. And the way he feels right now has nothing to do with the Juubi, it's because today is October 10th."

"And?"

"Today is Naruto's birthday." It was pretty easy for Gaara to remember something trivial like his best friend's birthday even after around 2000 years because he had been sleeping for the vast majority of it.

The golden eyes of Yoruichi went wide at hearing that, "Well why didn't he say anything? He never told anyone."

"Naruto has never particularly enjoyed his birthday." Gaara said informatively, "It wasn't really much of anything for anyone to celebrate, rather to mourn, for many reasons back when we were all ninja. Now I'm quite certain it's gone on to be something of a curse as time has dragged on. A birthday is more or less meaningless to someone that doesn't notice the years nor has any reason to celebrate being alive."

Upon finishing that statement and checking to see that it had actually left Yoruichi with a bit of a sad expression, "That's rather dark." She told him, and it forced Gaara to think about how morbid that sounded. In the end Gaara just shrugged to himself and kept reading. Hey, he was not the most inspirational guy in the world. He had one, maybe two good speeches in him every one hundred years and that was it.

As long as he was going to be alright it was okay then.

"Just give him some time to wake up and get his feet underneath him." Gaara told her. There wasn't any need to be a busybody about any of it. Naruto knew that there just so happened to be people around him that cared instead of him being alone the way he had been beforehand. By the end of the day he'd be walking around on top of the mountain again so to speak.

XxX

(Later That Day – Mother Base – Training Ground)

The best thing that Naruto found he could do in the past on his birthday was just make it a normal day. He didn't remember that until around noon when he finally decided to roll his ass out of bed and try to do something with the day.

He ventured down to the training area of the base in order to get in a little workout. Maybe afterward he'd start trying to formalize and straighten out things around there. Equilibrium needed some kind of clear-cut operational procedure when handling things that got more complicated then just 'go to where Hollow A is and kill it, first come first serve'. That was not going to fly against a smart enemy.

Combat with the Bounts had revealed that despite the raw talent amassed underneath that roof, a lot of things about them were still a mess.

But before he could rack his brain further on his ideas on straightening things out, he heard explosions and sounds of combat and saw Chad once again training to destroy Gaara's hardest defense, and Tatsuki working on honing her element in battle by sparring against Ichigo and Uryuu in a three-way battle while Koga seemed to be observing in order to keep things level between them, "What the fuck are all of you doing here? It's Friday!"

Naruto's yell at the younger members got them all to stop what they were doing to look towards him. Ichigo finally took it upon himself to speak up and answer him, "It's October 10th."

"So?" They didn't know it was his birthday, and even if they did that didn't warrant skipping school. Unlike he and Gaara they actually needed to go.

"It's Health and Sports Day. There's no class in school it was just a health festival all day." Tatsuki explained with her hands on her hips, slightly miffed that her fight was stopped. She could swear Uryuu had been slowing down and she was about to tag his four-eyed ass with a good hit, "Well we ditched after homeroom and came here since we'd get a better workout and be productive training than what we were going to do there."

"Hmm." Naruto blinked and looked around before slowly nodding once as he continued to walk through the grounds, "Alright. Keep going then, and for a hint; stop aiming at what you can see and start aiming for where you feel they'll attack you from. Ichigo's not that unpredictable." And just like that the sounds of chaos once again erupted all around, getting Naruto to sigh serenely, "I remember when I was their age… blowing up stuff and routinely getting maimed to get stronger." He said as he sat down on the grass next to Koga.

Koga let out a grunt of acknowledgment, his face barely changing expression even when Orihime arrived and set down a mass of onigiri that had been prepared in the kitchen upstairs, "Here you go!" She said brightly, sitting down on the ground in seiza and smoothing out her school uniform skirt, "Yoruichi-chan said that none of the ingredients I wanted to try for fillings were out of stock so I had to use normal ones."

'Thank you Yoruichi-chan…' Naruto thought silently, finding it safe to take a bite of one. Orihime's more eccentric cooking practices didn't really bear much edible fruit so to speak. They probably weren't really out of stuff, Yoruichi probably just hid it elsewhere to keep Orihime from filling the rice balls with something weird, "Orihime, don't you have an attack move too? Your healing technique and the barrier aren't the only things you've got right?"

She had been doing fantastic with both, but there was no way she didn't possess some kind of offensive maneuver, even though he had never seen one from her. Logic dictated that when things got rough, even for healers, they would have one trump card to use just in case.

"Do you want to see it?" Orihime asked him, an unsure look on her face, like she was self-conscious about her attack technique. A nod from Naruto was the response as he stuffed his face with a rice ball before making a clone to serve as cannon fodder, "Well, okay then…" She said, standing up as Naruto swatted his clone's hand away from the rice balls and pointed, more or less telling it to assume its predetermined position, "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, hit the clone with your best shot. I do worse things to my clones all the time." Naruto said, getting a glare from the clone that was really not looking forward to whatever Orihime was going to do. Regardless, it dropped into a ready stance and prepared for the worst, "Show me what you've got."

Taking a breath, Orihime called upon her energy and channeled it towards the hair clips she wore in her hair before focusing in on Naruto's Kage Bunshin, "Koten Zanshun (Solitary Sacred Cutting Shield) I reject!" A small, blade looking thing materialized in the air and flew at the clone fast enough for a blaze of energy to cover it on the way.

"What the hell!" Naruto's Kage Bunshin managed to cry out before it was sliced through by Orihime's attack and rendered to smoke.

Now that was an attack with some destructive potential. Why didn't she train with that more often when everyone else was working on strengthening their attacks? Naruto didn't understand, "You've been sitting on a move like that the entire time I've known you and you haven't pulled it out around me yet? No wonder you can take down low level Hollows in town. I was wondering how you were doing it."

Orihime blushed in embarrassment at the attention, but smiled regardless, "Well… I don't really like fighting. I used Tsubaki, my attack spirit, in battle while we were in the Seireitei and he got really hurt because I don't have killing intent. I just can't find a reason to want to kill someone."

Ugh. That was why he was hesitant at first when it came to having Orihime on as a member of the group. Not having much of a will to fight was simply not going to cut it when the chips were down.

But he knew what it would take to at least begin tempering her will to fight, "Well I don't know how to make you train that attack anyway. But it's got a lot of power if you can just throw some will to fight behind it." Naruto told her, getting up and standing by her, a hand on her shoulder, "Whenever you fight, if you have to fight, I just want you to think of what could happen to your friends if you can't stop your enemy. What could happen to Ichigo, Chad, Uryuu, or Tatsuki."

"What about you or Yoruichi, or Gaara and Hidan."

"Focus on your friends that you actually care about since you'll probably be with them when you need to use your attack." He was not going to say that if none of the people she mentioned could defeat a particular foe then the best thing she could do would either be to run for her life or hide behind the strongest shield she could muster and hope the enemy wore themselves out. That would have been a counter-productive statement.

A loud blast then ended the conversation abruptly with smoke and debris flying their way from the site of the three-way training battle. Orihime panicked momentarily and made sure that the food for everyone was covered while Naruto just shielded his eyes and looked at what had happened.

"Ow…"

"Inoue… Tatsuki took the last Getsuga Tenshou pretty badly can you help?"

"It was your both of your faults Kurosaki. A pincer attack was not going to catch me like that."

"Coming!" Orihime cried out, getting back up from protecting lunch and running over to a downed Tatsuki to heal her best friend. All Naruto could do was thank goodness that by now Tatsuki was used to being nearly killed by fighting with Hidan or she might have actually panicked from the injuries she'd received.

Man, he was a terrible sensei to keep letting stuff like that happen.

XxX

(Soul Society – South Rukongai District 79)

"What a dump." A large man standing well over seven feet said and wearing white hakama, and an open white jacket that showed a hole right in the middle of his chest. He was tan and balding with a black ponytail and sideburns and had ridges on his head. His eyebrows were unkempt and orange and on his cheeks were red markings. But for anyone paying attention, the most visible trait on the mammoth person was white bone and teeth along his jaw line looking like the bottom of a Hollow's mask, "Were we already here and I blacked out or something?" He quipped, noticing that the place was quite battle-damaged though construction was being done.

"I don't know." A man walking behind the large one grumbled out, hands shoved in his pockets. He had light blue spiky hair, blue eyes with green markings around them, white hakama, a ragged white open jacket with the sleeves rolled up. He had a muscular torso, but the thing of note was the black hole that sat on his abdomen as well as the right jawbone and jagged teeth of a Hollow sitting on his cheek. Behind him trailed five similarly dressed men making them look like a roving gang of sorts, "Does it look like I really care what happened here Yammy? Let's just get started damn it."

The people that had seen them coming moved directly out of their way, but like mere insects they were paid no mind.

"Why are we even here Grimmjow?" The smallest of the tagalongs asked the blue-haired man. He had shark-like teeth and a large mask remnant that looked like a hammerhead shark's head, "Are we going for the Seireitei?" He asked with a bit of a lisp due to his jagged teeth.

"No. Aizen's too scared to go right for the throat." Grimmjow replied, a bit of distaste in his voice for Aizen apparently. All of this wait-and-see crap that had been the norm since losing Szayel Aporro Granz at the start of the fall, "It's all your weak brother's fault Yylfordt." He said to one of the men following him that had long blonde hair and a mask remnant that looked to be a small broken helmet on the top of his head. The man merely chuckled in response.

The giant Yammy looked around with disgust slipping into his gaze as the denizens of the Rukongai just stayed out of their way. These ants were afraid and they weren't even openly flaunting any Reiatsu at all, "I'm getting sick of these runts looking at me." He said aloud, getting a few people to recoil in fear.

"The Shinigami are seriously fucking slow if they haven't gotten here yet." Remarked Grimmjow before noticing a grin on Yammy's face that promised nothing good. He knew what he was about to do and let out a groaning sigh, "You're seriously about to use Gonzui (Soul Inhalation). You might as well go ahead… it's boring me to death being here anyway."

Chuckling to himself Yammy then began to inhale deeply. Not only was he simply sucking in air, he was sucking in bits and particles of Reishi from the air… and pulling all of the energy out of the people around, absorbing the souls of them by the dozens.

After taking in hundreds, Yammy stopped the technique and made a nasty face, "Blegh, all of those weak little souls tasted terrible." He remarked, spitting onto the ground after he was finished, "Better than souls in the world of the living though, but still disgusting."

Grimmjow shook his head at the display and looked around at the fallen bodies littering the streets before walking ahead, "Fatass…" He said, though Yammy ignored him and pat his stomach as if he were full, "If that don't bring 'em out then I guess the Shinigami are just a pack of cowards after all." He then looked directly up in the sky at the figures in the air.

XxX

(Skies Above South Rukongai District 79)

"What ugly brutes." An effeminate looking male Arrancar said as he had observed the battle down below. He had short black hair with a hair clip that looked like Hollow's teeth, and a row of three pink stars just above his left eyebrow. His white outfit had long sleeves that went past his hands and showed his lower torso and part of his hip where the number eight was displayed in a tattoo, "I'm glad we only came to make sure they got started. A mission like this is perfect for idiots like them don't you think Harribel?"

Next to him in the air stood Harribel, her arms crossed with her scrutinizing eyes staring down at the devastated district town, "That attitude just from being promoted to Espada isn't the best thing to have Luppi." She said, turning her green eyes to him, "You're only among us chiefly because of the fact that Szayel Aporro was killed. Don't forget that."

Luppi glared silently at Harribel, biting his lip and holding back his words, 'Don't think you can talk down to me like that you bitch.' Even though she was a very even-tempered figure, it wouldn't have been wise to risk earning Harribel's ire for a comment. She was far higher up on the Espada food chain than he was and had more direct combat experience. He was not strong enough to back up any big talk and he knew it.

"…Besides, if all goes as planned your replacement will be brought into the fold soon enough as it is."

His… replacement? What did that mean?

Luppi turned towards Harribel with an angered expression on his face as he glared her down, "You think it'll be that easy to replace me?" Luppi seethed out, "I'm not like that useless know-it-all Szayel Aporro. I can actually win a battle outside of the walls of Las Noches unlike that bastard."

"Then you will prove this by performing the mission according to Aizen-sama's wishes." Harribel said succinctly before locking eyes with Luppi and smothering him with her Reiatsu, "Or you could always just return to Las Noches and let him know that the burden of responsibility is too much for you."

Luppi seethed in anger but reigned himself in, "So we're going to retrieve the Espada to replace me? All new Arrancar are assigned as Números. How do you know Aizen-sama won't give whoever it is a place below me for being weaker?" What possible recruit could be in the world of the living where they were set on going?

"That's simple." The answer was short and sweet, "…Because this particular Arrancar was my predecessor." With that, Harribel opened a Garganta and began to make her way through it, a calm expression set on what was visible of her face above her very high collar.

Staring at her in surprise as she made her way through the portal, Luppi eventually followed after her wordlessly, "…Of course." He said, sounding kind of frazzled and confused, "Let's go get our Fracción from Hueco Mundo and then go."

There was an Arrancar that _used_ to be an Espada?

And they weren't killed?

How would one be around in the world of the living anyway? An Arrancar was still an Arrancar, former Espada or not.

XxX

(Mother Base – Security Room)

"If you wanted a proximity alarm you could have just come to me sooner." Urahara said in an amused manner as he was currently watching Pesche and Dondochakka run around setting up all kinds of equipment in the unused room down the hall from the executive floor, "What? Did you think that no one would ever try to sneak into this place?"

Naruto grumbled at Urahara in response, "Give me a break… I haven't actually had a real house in like 200 years. Security wasn't the first thing I was thinking of when I started putting this place together."

"Obviously."

"Oh shut up." Despite saying such a thing, Naruto reached into his pocket and pulled out a stack of money that he slapped into Urahara's hand for payment, "How do you even get all of this stuff in the first place?"

Not answering at first as he flipped through the bills, Urahara eventually finished counting his monetary compensation and answered him in his own way, "Oh, you know…" He uttered vaguely.

"No… I don't know." Naruto said, giving him a deadpan stare, "…That's why I asked you." The two just stared at each other before shrugging, a stalemate established between them with Naruto eventually not caring anymore and Urahara realizing that Naruto wasn't going to say anything that he could use to mess with his head any longer.

The two just stared at the two Arrancar doing manual labor until outside in the hall a crash was heard and they saw Nel run past the doorway, laughing as Jinta chased after her and Ururu followed trying to urge them to stop being so rowdy in another person's property.

"You know, we had a thought." Naruto said, something being brought to mind that got Urahara's attention, "Orihime healed Uryuu's whole problem with his Reiryoku after we found out exactly what the problem was. Maybe we can do that with Nel?"

A small grin worked its way onto Urahara's face after hearing Naruto's idea, "You know I was thinking the exact same thing not too long ago during the whole mess with the Bounts. We were all too busy to get things moving on that front though. But I guess it's true though." He finished, getting Naruto to look at him curiously, "Great minds think alike!"

Naruto grinned back at him and the two started laughing maniacally, an arm around the other's shoulders in a moment of camaraderie. Pesche and Dondochakka both shivered in fear at the terrifying sight and sound of the possibly two most dangerous blonde men alive cackling about something.

The 'great minds' were interrupted when Ichigo in his normal body walked by the doorway as he had been following the path of mischief and small-scale destruction left by the kids all over the base, "Yeah… Inoue walked home about forty-five minutes ago with Tatsuki." He informed them matter-of-factly, "They're gone."

Both Naruto and Urahara stopped laughing at the unwelcome news and Urahara scratched his scalp underneath his bucket hat, "Huh. Well that's inconvenient."

In return, Naruto cursed loudly, not holding himself back on the emotional front, "Damn it! I knew I should have pushed harder to get her to take up a living space here!" He pulled out a cell phone and dialed Orihime's number only to get her answering machine, "Orihime when you get this call me back. We've got an idea and you're involved. Bye." He hung up and left the room, walking down the hall to head up to the roof, "Yeah, she's not going to get that. I'm going to get her myself. Later jerks."

With that, he jumped off of the roof and started hopping from building to building in the direction of Orihime's home while Ichigo and Urahara watched him move out of sight, "Well…" Ichigo said before turning to head back downstairs, "I'm going home too. I don't need dad or Yuzu getting all upset at me being late again."

"Tell your dad I said hi!" Urahara yelled at the retreating Ichigo, fan in front of his face and waving his hand at him.

"Dad doesn't know who you are you crazy hat-and-clogs bastard!" Ichigo snapped back without even turning around. Because of this though, he managed to see a Jigokuchou fly past him and onto Urahara's finger. Whatever it was there for certainly took the light-heatedness right out of Urahara from the looks of things, "Hey, what's the matter?"

Damn it things never slowed down or stopped did they? They had just gotten through defending Karakura Town from some messed up immortal super-beings and now there was some trouble stirring up in the Soul Society. Arrancar trouble. And the 'expertise' of those that had been in combat with Aizen's army most recently was requested for a quick-response job to back up the small unit sent out to take care of the problem.

Unless Yamamoto sent out a lieutenant-class Shinigami in the party there was going to be major trouble for whomever was dispatched.

Yoruichi was out on a personal errand out of town, Naruto had just left the base and was probably halfway to his destination by then, So that left Gaara and Hidan, but sending them back to the Soul Society after the trouble they almost stirred up was a requisition for a disaster, "Who is still here?"

Hearing the seriousness in the usually jovial scientist's voice, Ichigo immediately answered, knowing that now wasn't the time to be snarky and whatnot, "Me, Uryuu, and Chad."

'Damn.' Urahara thought. Well, then was the time for action, and those three would be sufficient to take, especially since the Seireitei had already dispatched the fastest interceptors possible according to the message from the Jigokuchou, "Go get them before they can leave. Meet me down in the training room and be ready for a fight. I'll tell you what's happening and why we're needed on the way." Apparently it was time for him to step out into the field again.

Ichigo nodded and quickly took off, grabbing the Gikon that contained Kon from his pocket and preparing to pop it once he had found his two friends and had informed them that trouble was afoot.

XxX

(Soul Society – South Rukongai District 79)

The sounds of an explosion rang out as Grimmjow sat around on a portion of wrecked building, impatiently drumming his fingers on his knee, "Grr… it's been three hours already. This is bullshit!" He shouted, standing up and firing a sudden red Cero from his palm at a nearby home, utterly destroying it. It didn't matter, everyone in the town was already dead thanks to Yammy.

"Should we head towards another town Grimmjow?" An Arrancar with a mask remnant that covered the top of his head with a long spike that pointed to the right asked, patiently waiting for an order or a threat along with a short, fat brown-haired Arrancar that had a mask covering half of his face.

Grimmjow sneered before turning to one of his Fracción to give him a response to the question, "That's a waste of time Shawlong. We made enough noise here to get some damn attention! How much Reiatsu do we need to pump out to get those blind, deaf, and dumb bastards to pay us any mind?"

Grimmjow's less patient and more destructive Fracción were busying themselves by annihilating every bit of what was left of the town. One that was large but not even close to Yammy that had half wild red hair and half a shaved head, the one that was kind of tall with long blonde hair, and the one with the hammerhead shark look were taking target competition with Cero blasts.

A series of rather heavy footsteps got them to turn their attention to Yammy who seemed to be returning from somewhere, "Well even if we did, there's nothing useful any further from here. Just another place filled with weaklings. The way they bunch their living quarters together makes them way too easy to kill." He then chuckled to himself, "By the way, some Shinigami did show up, but I killed them when they attacked me."

Scoffing in anger at being called out on a mission into the Soul Society without even getting to do anything, Grimmjow jumped up and kicked the building segment he'd been sitting on, destroying the rest of it and sending it flying back, "Fine! Fuck this then, let's go back!"

"Oh come on." One of the smaller Fracción with the hammerhead shark mask said, "We can stay, can't we? It's not like the Shinigami won't send more, and even if it's way more to try and deal with an Espada they've got us to die by as well!"

"Fine Di Roy…" Grimmjow relented. But only because he was not about to let his first trip outside of Hueco Mundo in who knew how long end without him even getting a bit of a workout. He had left amicably so that he could fight, not sit back and do nothing.

Still with a grin on his face, Yammy was caught off-guard when a long slash suddenly appeared across his throat. This alerted all of the other intruding Arrancar sprang to attention with the knowledge that there was someone that could get the drop on them to the extent that they could sneak attack an Espada.

"Back to back!" Shawlong shouted as he and all of Grimmjow's Fracción did just that, preventing any space from being between them. If someone could attack Yammy like that, they had to focus on locating the person that did so first.

"No you idiots!" Grimmjow yelled at them, drawing his sword in preparation for battle, "Don't forget the abilities of the Shinigami!"

Six sparks of yellow energy flew at the group from different directions and pinned them all together after slamming into their midsections. Despite their best efforts to do so, they couldn't move from their positions even an inch, "What the hell just happened?"

"Buttsubuse, Gegetsuburi (Crush, Five-Formed Heads)!"

A large spiked ball attached to a chain flew down from the sky to slam down onto the trapped Fracción of Grimmjow, "Ha! My captain and I took you jackasses down in one move! Get smashed you penniless Hollow bait!"

The Shikai of Omaeda flew through the air, about to pound down onto Grimmjow's underlings until the very large hand of Yammy caught it in one hand, palming the weapon like a stress ball. There was barely even a light mark on his throat where it had been cut moments ago, "Who are you going to smash?" He then gave the ball and chain a sharp tug and pulled the user of the weapon out of his previous hiding place in the wrecked and charred remnants of the town.

Still holding onto his weapon, Omaeda sailed through the air still attached to his chain and yelling for dear life before he was slammed to the ground a ways away, a plume of dust rising where he landed.

With that bit of misdirection, an attack was launched on Grimmjow's Fracción, only for the blue-haired man himself to step in front of them with Sonido and slash his Zanpakutou violently, managing to deflect the swing of the enemy's Zanpakutou that would have killed more than one of his underlings, "A sneak attack from the Shinigami? Ruthless… and I like it." He noticed that his attacker was a female and smirked, "I wonder how strong you really are though."

Having been thrown back from her attempt to take down four enemies in one attack, and with Omaeda stupidly announcing beforehand that there was more than one of them before she revealed herself, probably contributing to the failed maneuver, Soi-Fon scoffed softly as she faced off in a crouch with Grimmjow, her own Zanpakutou held in a reverse grip, 'Another of those Hollows that are more like Shinigami…' She thought to herself, remembering her expeditionary mission into Hueco Mundo a while back.

She had to operate under the assumption that while she knew next to nothing of his abilities, only what he potentially could have been capable of, he on the other hand more than likely knew a substantial amount of her own abilities. With Aizen, Tousen, and Ichimaru on their side they had to know a staggering amount about the Gotei 13, the Seireitei, and the Soul Society in general. There was no way that these opponents were not well-versed.

But for the largest one, Yammy, to survive even after having his throat cut with her Zanpakutou… it was maddening. This Hierro of theirs was tough if a shallow scratch was all he received from that.

So there was the straightforward option of outright fighting him to overwhelm quickly. She couldn't risk trying to draw out a battle to find his skills out just in case those skills were too dangerous to allow him to use even once. Kill your enemy before they have a chance to even begin formulating a strategy to deal with you; that was the way Onmitsukidou fought.

Soi-Fon's immediate attack consisted of her closing the distance with blistering speed and feinting an attack that Grimmjow looked as if he was preparing to bite on, but before she could actually make a move, a sudden burst of Shunpo placed her at his opening and allowed her to cut him down from the side. Grimmjow let the blade of his sword fall to the side to block the attack as Soi-Fon pushed off.

Not letting up, she struck at him several times, the steel clashing as he blocked her until she delivered a slick jump kick, smashing her shin across his face and snapping his head to the side, sending him sliding across the ground on his heels. Grimmjow smirked and faced his head back towards Soi-Fon as if nothing had happened, "A good kick. Really sneaky. But is that the best you've got?"

Grimmjow dashed forward used an upward slash that Soi-Fon leaned back out of the way of, but he took that opportunity to threw his Zanpakutou in the air. The surprise of seeing her enemy disarm himself led Soi-Fon to instinctually go to attack him, but luckily her trained reflexes were none too shabby as if they hadn't been she would have been on the receiving end of a rapid barrage of punches that she avoided by using Shunpo to get out of his punching range.

'Not a mark on him?' Well wasn't that a slight against her strength and talent. That kick felt like she had kicked steel… Hierro = Steel Skin… what a troublesome ability, 'Hakuda is not the method of fighting this man that I should use.'

"I know why you're fighting me woman." Grimmjow said to Soi-Fon before suddenly rushing forward to attack her. His attempts to cut her were met with Soi-Fon's own evasive skills, dodging his strikes even as he continued to speak, "You Onmitsukidou are all about taking advantage of any weakness you see, and you saw me and Yammy and assumed I'd be the weaker of the two because I'm smaller than him right? Well you're wrong!" He finished with a mighty overhead slash that put a crater into the ground beneath the two of them.

Soi-Fon was able to block with her Zanpakutou above her head though as the two tested one another's strength, "You're wrong about that. I'm fighting you because I _know_ you're stronger." Her eyes flicked towards Omaeda for a moment, "There's no way that my idiot of a subordinate would last even five minutes against you." From the way he was running for his life from Yammy's Bala attacks he probably wouldn't last five minutes against him either, "So instead of risking the chances of dealing with a two-on-one encounter sooner I decided to take the stronger opponent on and try to kill or wound you before Omaeda got himself killed and I was put at a blatant disadvantage."

Really? That was… cruel. Really cruel. There were Shinigami that were okay with that? Aizen neglected to mention how opportunistic some of them could be, namely Soi-Fon.

"And now I guess it's time to make sure I do just that." Soi-Fon said, creating enough space to work her way back and make her next move, "Jinteki Shakusetsu, Suzumebachi (Sting All Enemies to Death, Hornet)!"

Grimmjow prepared for a major shift in the scale of the battle, but had to let out a laugh when he saw Soi-Fon's Zanpakutou shrink to its Shikai state; the black and gold gauntlet with stinger blade on her middle finger, "What is that supposed to be? Let me tell you something to remember. I'm the Sexta Espada, Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez." He then released a massive amount of power as a show of the difference between he and she, "You've got to come with some heavier firepower than that if you want to make a single mark on me!"

'All it'll take is one mark… or two.' Soi-Fon thought to herself. But the difference in power between Grimmjow and his Fracción was absurd. Those four weren't even mentioning in comparison. Even Yammy was leagues behind him in that regard, and that giant had been the one that had killed all of the 2nd Division members that had been dispatched alongside her and Omaeda to deal with this issue. She had definitely selected the strongest enemy to fight… for better or for worse.

"I'll show you just who you think you're fucking with here!" Grimmjow shouted, extending his right hand at Soi-Fon as red power built up in his palm, "Cero (Hollow Flash)!"

XxX

(With Naruto – Karakura Town – Orihime's Apartment)

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!

It was nighttime and it wasn't exactly polite to drop in on someone at night so randomly, but if Orihime checked her phone regularly this wouldn't have been necessary. Though he couldn't rightly talk. He never really liked using his phone himself.

He wasn't left standing outside for long when the door opened to reveal the good-natured girl he had come to speak with. Orihime shot Naruto a beaming smile upon seeing him standing in her doorway, "Oh, Naruto hi. Come in." He did just that as she moved aside to let him in, "I'd offer you something to eat, but I just got through eating dinner with Tatsuki-chan. If you're looking for her, she left to go home a little while ago. I think you can catch her before she gets there."

"No, actually I came to talk to you." Naruto replied, surprising her and making her wonder what Naruto wanted with her. Orihime's apartment wasn't really overly decorated but it still seemed to suit her, "The way you healed Uryuu a little while back, Urahara and I were thinking that maybe you could use that to heal Nel. It's an old injury that we can't really fix because we don't have any way to do it, just like with Uryuu, so maybe your powers could fix her up."

She didn't even know anything was wrong with Nel. At first she figured that Naruto was talking about the scar on her face, but it seemed to be more serious than that, "Of course I can try." Orihime said, happy to do something to help before she suddenly thought of something and made to run back towards a back room, "Oh, wait a minute, I'll be right back!"

Tilting his head in confusion as he saw the teenage girl run back to seemingly get something, Naruto waited patiently in her living room, looking around and taking everything in. His eyes honed in on many pictures that she had up on shelves, tables, and walls. None with her parents or any other family except for when she was seemingly a little girl, with a young man that must have been her brother in the pictures.

He must have died since he never heard anything about Orihime's family, even from Tatsuki when he had asked her about it. It must have been a sore subject and if anyone else could, it would be him that could relate to something like that.

"Naruto!" The spiky blonde sage turned his head back to Orihime to see her holding something out to him, "I didn't have any time to wrap it since I rushed to order it made and picked it up on the way home, but here you go. Happy birthday!" Naruto blinked in confusion and took the trinket from Orihime as she kept talking, "I was going to sneak it into your room tomorrow the way Yoruichi was going to do with her gift for you… and I shouldn't have said that last thing out loud. Oops."

Naruto held up a metal pendant, a metal circle with four small bars going inward to suspend a replica of the Uzumaki Clan crest in the middle of it. A small smile came to his face and he chuckled a bit, "You know this is the first birthday present I've gotten in a long, long, long time." He said with a hint of fondness in his voice.

"It's not really much." Orihime admitted, sheepishly rubbing the back of her head, "We all found out that your birthday was today from Gaara when we asked why you didn't bother going to school, so after the festival started me and Tatsuki-chan got this made for you before going to Mother Base."

"No, this is great." It had been so long since anyone had given Naruto any kind of gift that he forgot how nice it was to be thought of like that, "Oh man… I need to get you something special for your birthday whenever it is."

"Well you've got a year to think about it, because it's in September." Orihime said brightly before watching Naruto stoop down in the corner of her living room, a dejected aura around him as he muttered that he had missed it, "It's okay! You didn't know!" That only seemed to depress him further, getting her to walk over and pat him on the back, "What's the matter?"

"I'm the worst leader ever… I don't even know my own subordinates' birthdays…"

"It's nice that you feel that bad about it though." Then again, after thinking about what she had just said Orihime figured that sounded a little bad, "Not that I want you to feel bad about things! I'm just saying that it clearly means something to you, and that's nice to know!"

Naruto looked at the pendant in his hand. It was well made and it clearly showed that attention was paid to him since the Uzumaki Clan crest sat on a lot of the things he had, such as the desk in his room/office, the back of his sage coat, and many of his normal clothes. It took him a second to realize that a tear had actually gone down his face, 'These are good kids.' He thought to himself, 'I don't care about outliving them anymore. It's nice being around all of them. Ichigo, Chad, Orihime, Tatsuki… even Uryuu and his poor disposition.'

That carried past the teenagers as well. Everyone he had met and had interacted with since getting involved in all of this other-worldly business including Yoruichi, Urahara, and so many others. They all meant something to him.

"Thank you though Orihime-chan." Naruto said, getting up once he had cleared his face of any sign of crying. He gave the girl a big hug that she gladly returned given her and Naruto's friendly-by-design natures, "I really appreciate this. You don't know how much even this means to me. I'll wear this on the toughest material I can find so that I don't lose it, all the time. I promise. It'll never come off."

The warmth radiating off of Naruto's hug was very comforting to Orihime. It was hard to believe that this man had been alive for as long as he had been, especially at times like this. Most older people, especially those of a warrior variety, were rather cold and prickly. Naruto was the exact opposite.

For some reason there was always just something about Naruto that she liked, having trusted him implicitly from the very beginning. He was a reliable guy as seen from the battles that he had been in. Different from the kind of personality that she liked about Ichigo, but with its own appeal in that he seemed to like not taking himself and the things around him too seriously most of the time.

Aside from that, he had been alive for around 2000 years! He probably had enough entertaining stories to tell one every day for years! They all only knew of two and even those were kind of amazing.

"At least you like it." Orihime told him, shutting her eyes as she still hugged him, "That's all that really matters." She almost didn't notice the fact that she was dozing off right in his arms. Goodness, why was this so comfortable? She fell asleep just like that, forcing Naruto to hold her up before picking her up bridal style to carry her to her room.

He didn't want to have to do that. He really initiated the hug for the truest of reasons, really wanting to convey his appreciation for the thoughtful gift, but his senses picked up something outside. And even with the presences trying to hide themselves, one seemed inexperienced at doing so and the other just couldn't completely block out its calculating tint of an energy signature.

Especially since it had been one he had felt before… back in the Seireitei.

Naruto put Orihime to bed and mentally apologized for lulling her to sleep in such a manner. As he made his way outside her front door he locked it behind him, knowing that either way if the person outside was after her and he wasn't there a locked door wasn't going to solve anything, 'Kami I really need to move her into Mother Base as soon as possible.'

He jumped up and landed on top of Orihime's apartment as he looked around and found what he was looking for, sitting right on top of a water tower on another building a little further down the block. Disappearing and reappearing closer in a Shunshin, Naruto stared calmly at the man sitting on the water tower trying to remember just who this person was, "I know you. What's your name again? I swear I know it already."

"Y'know it's really rude to forget people that you've tried to beat up before." The silver-haired, ever smiling figure sitting on the water tower carelessly said to Naruto, "My name's Ichimaru Gin. Don't forget it this time alright?" Below the water tower on the rooftop level was another person though, "Say hi to our friend here Wonderweiss." Gin urged to the figure.

Wonderweiss seemed to be a kid of an Arrancar with matted down blonde hair, a small crown-looking mask remnant on the top of his head, purple eyes, freckles, and a snaggletooth, wearing the Arrancar uniform with a big black hole in his chest.

He seemed to be unaware of pretty much anything going on, not registering Naruto as a threat or an enemy or anything. Like there was nothing in his empty little head at all, "Uhwaa…" He drawled out, looking around confusedly.

"Don't mind him." Gin said, hopping down from the water tower and landing next to Wonderweiss who started drifting away from the former Shinigami captain, "He doesn't talk… or think… ever. He doesn't like me though, he's scared of me for some reason. He loves the hell out of Kaname though."

"Why'd you even bring the kid in the first place?" Naruto asked, giving Wonderweiss a wary glance as he crawled over to the edge of the building, finding the distance to the ground and the road more interesting.

"Just letting him get some mission experience. He can't just stay in Hueco Mundo all the time… it's unhealthy y'know?" Gin said, his shut eyes and his smile just as prominent as ever. Naruto could see why Wonderweiss was frightened of him. Any child with any kind of common sense or instinct would be wary of that man, "We just thought we'd take a stroll through Karakura Town. Check it all over after that little issue with the Bounts, make sure that it still had the minimum 50000 souls we need for the plan to work, looking in on those interesting Ryoka from the invasion. Things like that."

So he wasn't there to fight? Well wasn't that a waste of resources to come all the way out there just for a walkabout? Then again he could just be lying. He hated trying to decipher motives from guys like Gin. He always seemed to be missing the big picture when it came to things like this. He'd have used his tailed beast mode to find out for sure, but that would have started a fight. And he was trying to be civil.

"Why are you doing this anyway?" Naruto asked Gin, "Trying to destroy Karakura Town, betraying your comrades… you seem shifty but the other guys have reasons. Tousen thinks this is justice or something, Aizen wants to kill the Spirit King, but what about you? What are you getting out of all of this?"

"You don't need a reason to want things to happen." Gin said with a shrug, "What's wrong with wanting a change? More people have died for worse reasons in the past. A guy like me, I just like seeing things put into motion. Things need to change, that's all I have to say."

Naruto gave Gin a deadpan look. It wasn't really that strange after the amount of time he had been alive; anarchy for anarchy's sake. He'd heard it before, he'd seen it before.

Gin then made a flippant hand gesture as if to mimic the wind blowing, "And in the end what's a life really? When you die you become a soul, and when you die as a soul you're reincarnated… blah, blah, blah. It's a big circle and in the end it doesn't matter. It's a boring, predictable cycle. What's an existence without a little mayhem?"

Peaceful maybe?

"I can't really let that happen." Naruto said, scratching his head before pointing all around him, "You see, it's kind of my job to make sure that stuff like that never happens. I keep the balance of this world… or at least I try to, and you doing that would mean that I failed. That would really be a waste of 2000 years."

"I understand." Gin said, holding his arms up in a defensive posture, "But that _does_ mean that you and I would have to fight at some point doesn't it?"

Naruto looked around, noticing how quiet it was before staring at the oddly calm member of the head conspirators of the Seireitei's troubles, "So does that mean you want to just do this now or what?" Despite the light bantering going on, the tension was set for a fight and they both knew it.

"…Might as well." The smile of Gin grew even further than before if possible, "…Just to get it out of the way. So make the first move."

A chuckle and a smirk came from Naruto as he tensed his muscles and stood prepared, "I'm not moving first. You move."

Wonderweiss just stared between the two with the same vacant expression on his face as the power between them began slowly building, "Wuhhh?"

XxX

(Meanwhile – With Tatsuki)

According to Naruto's orders when she began training, Tatsuki when not at the base could train at home. She just had to make sure that her parents didn't catch wind of her abilities. Even loved ones would freak out if they found out what she was capable of. Luckily she had found a place underneath a bridge by a river that sat near her house. Just a place to work on some of her less subtle techniques away from the possible prying eyes of her parents.

Blowing fireballs around her room probably wouldn't work out so properly either.

She heard a bump sound, but she figured it was just a car on the bridge directly above her hitting a bump and continued working on her techniques, playing around with the hand-seals for the newest ranged combat jutsu that Naruto had given her after she had proven her ability to use Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu (Fire Release: Great Fireball Jutsu), and the follow-up jutsu he had given her, "Katon: Housenka no Jutsu (Fire Release: Phoenix Flower Jutsu), he taught her something a little bigger that she had gotten down after a week.

There was another huge thud, though this time it came from the ground on the side of the bridge, prompting Tatsuki to turn her head and widen her eyes at what she saw, "W-What the hell is that?" She whispered out quietly, taking a tentative step back, "It's huge…"

"Kurosaki Ichigo… I've come for you." The gruff, powerful voice said as it stomped forward towards her. It was a massive human-esque creature with a white mask that covered the upper and lower half of his face, eyes, nose, and some of the mouth visible. The entire body of whatever this was happened to be covered in fur with a massive Hollow hole in the chest, "This is the neighborhood of Substitute Shinigami Kurosaki Ichigo. So where is he girl?"

"Why the fuck do you want Ichigo?" Tatsuki shouted up at the Arrancar that stood three times taller than her. Now that she had the time to get over its sheer size she realized that it wasn't even stronger than the Arrancar trio of women that she had almost been killed by previously, and she hadn't really been afraid of them even back when she was weaker, "Do I look like Ichigo you dumbass freak?"

"You're a human that can see me. That's rare." The large Arrancar chuckled as he saw Tatsuki put her trench knives onto her hands, "You may be able to best an ordinary Hollow, but I'm at a level beyond that now. The old Grand Fisher is no more, now an Arrancar for Aizen-sama."

"I don't care who the hell you work for. Hien (Flying Swallow)." Tatsuki said with a bit of a sneer before channeling chakra to her blades and blowing super-heated air from her lungs on them from her mouth, coating her trench knives in flames, "Even if you knew where he was and you fought Ichigo he'd just pull you inside out from your ass anyway."

Grand Fisher found it intriguing that she wasn't running yet, "It's been a while since I've seen a human that can actually fight me back properly." He then started radiating power to try and paralyze her with fear, but it only made her smirk much to his surprise with a remark added for good measure.

"…I feel stronger Reiatsu and killing intent than that every morning when my sensei walks through the door for homeroom."

XxX

(Karakura Train Station)

"Look at all of these humans." Luppi said, a hand on his hip in a feminine manner as he watched many of the commuters that went to the nearby larger city of Tokyo for work arrive to head home for the night, "They've got no idea just how close they are to the end of this little rat race they call their lives."

The existence of humans was an unsightly thing. But it wasn't his thing to just cause random wanton destruction the way idiots like Yammy and at least one of the other Espada felt the need to because they were peons and insecure. No, the only time Luppi wished to use his powers was in battle against a foe that could actually pose him a challenge.

Especially since he apparently had to prove his worth as an Espada. He was not going to be given his position just to have it taken away for this person that had just been found and had been the number three before Harribel took the spot. Maybe killing that Uzumaki Naruto that had taken down his predecessor Szayel Aporro Grantz would prove his point, but he was nowhere to be seen. Someone else seemed to be coming though.

A low booming noise appeared behind him and Luppi smirked until he heard the voice of whomever had shown up to face him, "Oh come on. I beat the sand-rat off of the blocks and got here before him and I find out that I've got to fucking fight some chick Arrancar? Fuck, I got the gyp fight."

Angrily, Luppi turned around with a tick mark on his head to glare heatedly at the immediate disrespect that had been shown to him, "I'm a man!"

"Holy shit, you are? Ugh, gross! I thought you were kind of hot for a second! Now I've got to fuck you up just out of principle!" Hidan shouted, loudly damning Luppi for his deceiving appearance from behind. Thank goodness that neither Naruto nor Gaara heard that. They would have never let that one die.

Luppi observed Hidan with his heart-sized Hollow hole where his heart should be and his black cloak with red clouds, as well as the bone growth that looked like an amulet around his neck. This was clearly an Arrancar, "Are you formerly of the Espada under Aizen-sama?" He asked succinctly.

"Aizen? Fuck that jackass." Hidan replied, tapping his scythe on his shoulder, "I'd jump off of a fucking skyscraper if I ever woke up realizing that I worked for that guy… and I'd slit my throat on the way down."

"Oh." Luppi said matter-of-factly before drawing his Zanpakutou and smirking darkly at the rude fellow that had come out to confront him, "Well in that case I can just kill you and be done with it."

Instead of being angry or intimidated, Hidan's return grin bordered on insane in appearance as he held his scythe at the ready, "Now you're speaking my language you fucking fruitcake! Let's see what you've got princess!"

XxX

(With Gaara – Downtown Karakura Town)

The red-haired former Kazekage dodged a pair of blade chakrams thrown at him like boomerangs before having to block a slash of a western broadsword with the pole portion of his Shukaku claw halberd. It seemed as if he was having a run-in with a trio he already had some experience with.

Both he and Hidan had sensed different power signatures in different places due to different Garganta being opened separately, and split up to deal with them accordingly since they were what was left to watch over the town at the moment. While Hidan had been spoiling for a fight prior to this point, Gaara was trying to prevent one altogether.

Too bad he happened to be fighting the Fracción trio of Harribel, the three women that had lost face when their master told them to stand down against him during their last trip to Karakura Town.

"Why would you three attack me when the last time your mistress told you that to do so would be suicide?" Gaara asked as Mila Rose tried in vain to push back against his defense in mid-air. Gaara shifted his weapon towards its reverse position and skillfully jabbed the dark-skinned Amazonian-looking Arrancar in her belly to send her flying back a decent distance through the air. He then turned around and blocked the two bladed chakrams from hitting him on the way back to the person that threw them.

From behind Gaara however, Sung-Sun attempted to stab him with her sai, managing to impale him in the kidney, "It's simple." She said, covering her mouth with the very long sleeve of her other hand, "Because Harribel-sama told us what you told her during your last encounter; that you will not use your Resurrección in an area such as a town like this due to the damage that it would cause simply from the initial release of power it would generate. Your merciful nature isn't very Hollow-esque."

"And it'll get you killed tonight!" Apacci shouted at him, moving in to finish off Gaara along with Sung-Sun's stab until she realized that the expression of pain on Gaara's face had never changed a bit, even when Sung-Sun had twisted the weapon into him, "Wait! Back away from him!"

Taking her partner's words to heart, Sung-Sun did just that as 'Gaara' turned into a large amount of sand and reached out to try and grab her. She managed to get outside of the grabbing sand's range, but from the sand itself, Gaara burst through it and quickly took position behind her, smashing her with the pole of his halberd to send her back into the sand.

"Cero (Hollow Flash)!"

Mila Rose charged an orange blast in her left hand and punched it with her right to fire at Gaara's sand from the side before Sung-Sun could find herself trapped within the crushing confines of the sand prison. It burst the tightly packed granules apart, but they reformed to comprise the claw-like blade at the tip of Gaara's halberd, giving it its dangerous edge back.

"What makes you all believe that even without the use of my Resurrección you can defeat me?" Gaara stoically asked, facing down all three of his enemies and pointing his weapon at them in a prepared stance, ready to fend off all three of them.

"You're either overestimating yourself…" Mila Rose said, holding her sword as if she were about to charge Gaara.

"Or you're underestimating us…" Sung-Sun said, following up as she began generating pink energy around her body.

Apacci wasn't nearly as subtle with her approach as she charged up a red Cero on the tip of her horn, set on blasting Gaara back to Hueco Mundo or preferably hell if she had her way, "Either way, you're going to die you bastard! Cero (Hollow Flash)!" And with that, she fired it at Gaara only for him to dodge with one move of Sonido. A graceful-looking step that seemed to piss her off even more, "Hold still!"

Even with three opponents, Gaara's face stayed in the same calm, cool, collected expression that it always seemed to be in, "Hollows like you, always challenging me and attacking me one after another in Hueco Mundo due to my nature as an Arrancar, and the power that you figured couldn't possibly be my own actual strength… you are the reason I chose to slumber beneath the sands for over one thousand years. No better than Barragan; attacking me simply because you are threatened by me when all I want to do is just live on."

"Don't compare us to that old as dust fucker!" Apacchi shouted at Gaara angrily, "You're Aizen-sama's enemy, which means that you're Harribel-sama's enemy, and that makes you our enemy as well. No one here is scared of you at all! What's there to be scared of? You're nothing but bluster! Trying to look all cool, like you're in control. It's three-on-one, and even if you _are _stronger than all of us you won't use your Resurrección!"

"On the other hand." Sung-Sun said, a stark contrast of calm aptitude when compared to Apacci, "We do not have that self-imposed restriction on ourselves. You're handicapped."

"You call it a handicap." Gaara still seemed unfazed by the inherent threat of having to face down three Fracción Arrancar without drawing upon his own true powers as a Hollow, "On the other hand I like to think of it as an opportunity of sorts."

XxX

(Mother Base – Rooftop)

Jinta lay on the roof of the building, a broom in his hand as it had been the weapon that he had been chasing Nel around with for the better part of the afternoon, "Okay…" He said, breathing heavily from his back, chest heaving up and down to draw in breath, "I quit. I'm done. Oh man, how in the world could you run like that for so long?" And how did she get bursts of speed the way she did? Her legs were so short.

"Nel likes playin' eternal tag here!" Nel said, jumping over the exhausted Jinta like a hurdle again and again while Ururu sat off to the side looking on calmly, "Dere's so much more stuff to look at when you run around. Jinta's lazier den Dondochakka and Pesche. They can run around with Nel for days!" The energetic little Arrancar ran over to Ururu and tugged on her arm to try and get her to stand up, "What's wrong Ururu? You don wanna play anymore?" She got no reaction as Ururu was just looking up into the air at the moon.

Jinta noticed that Ururu was silent, even more silent than usual to the extent that she wouldn't answer Nel or even acknowledge her presence. That was not good, "Oh no." Jinta said lowly to himself before sitting up and running over to Ururu and Nel, moving the smallest girl away from Ururu as she stood up, still staring into the air, "Ururu, I'm telling you right now, get control. Don't go all Genocide Mode on me here."

The sky opened up and closed once more with a single figure standing in the air above the roof of the base. Without any prompt at all, Ururu immediately rushed through the air and launched a harsh kick without a second thought, only thinking of the intense and strange Reiatsu that could not be disguised and how it was an overwhelming threat.

The kick landed with a powerful smash echoing out, showing the absurd and scary strength possessed by the little girl, but it was found that her kick was blocked with one arm instead of hitting the head that it was aimed at.

A pair of calm green eyes from the dark-skinned, blonde Espada observed Ururu, still holding up the block before looking down at the rooftop where she saw Jinta standing in front of a little Arrancar with green hair and a skull mask on top of her head.

"Nelliel Tu Odelschwanck." Harribel said, loud enough for Jinta and Nel to hear her speak, as if she hadn't just defended against a vicious attack against her person, "Aizen-sama has wondered what had become of you. It is time for you to return to Hueco Mundo."

Oh this was not good, this was not good at all. Tessai was at Urahara's Shop, while Gaara and Hidan had gone off to engage the other Arrancar invaders that the new security system had picked up in Karakura Town. Not only that, but Ururu had gone berserk at the influence of Harribel's oppressive Reiatsu presence. Jinta knew that they were all more or less screwed if this lady was here to kill them. No matter how hard he fought back it would be the equivalent of a fly buzzing against a person's head.

That was a weird way to say her name Nel figured, getting her to point at herself and speak fearfully to the powerful Espada that was addressing either her or Jinta, and even she knew that it was more than likely her, "A-Are you talkin' to Nel?"

* * *

**Hello. Chapter done. I've not got much to say on this day of days, so I'll just leave you with a hope that you enjoyed and the assurance that I will certainly be back with a vengeance for the next installment.**

**Until the next time folks, Kenchi out.**


	27. Pierce Through the Sky

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. I might bleach my hair blonde… but then I'd be obligated to legally change my name to Mighty Joe Jon – The Black Blonde. And yes, you have to say the whole thing like 'A Tribe Called Quest'.

Yes, I also ripped that name from Delocated… because it's hilarious.

**Chapter 27: Pierce Through the Sky**

* * *

As Naruto and Gin continued with their standoff atop the roofs nearby Orihime's apartment, Wonderweiss just watched on dully, his mouth hanging slightly open as if he were trying to catch flies. To most people, the mounting Reiatsu and killing intent flowing up from Naruto and Gin would have had them shaking, but to Wonderweiss he was merely looking at them blankly as if he was anticipating quite the clash.

"Well…" Gin said lazily as he reached for the sword at his waist, "I guess that's enough messing around. I can't just stand here all night and stare at ya."

This broke the stalemate as Naruto blinked in confusion and tilted his head, giving Gin a look with similarly squinted eyes, "…You were staring? I thought you were about to go to sleep." It was pretty early in the night, and some people liked to get to bed early. He'd seen it from tons of people.

Gin's grin never left his face as it grew silent between the two of them again until he chose to spoke, "Yeah… Y'know, I don't think I like you much." He idly commented before suddenly drawing his Zanpakutou and flash stepping towards Naruto in a heartbeat's worth of time.

That amount of time was all Naruto required to make his Kage Bunshin hand-seal and replace himself with it, letting it be cut through in his place as he shifted locations out of Gin's field of vision. Though Gin was warned of an impending attack when he heard the humming noise of the Raijin no Ken being activated and managed to dodge a stab from behind.

He locked eyes with the glowing yellow blade and his perma-grin seemed to widen at the sight of it, "Well what do you know? Do you fancy yourself a swordsman to boot or what? You seem more like the 'beat-em-up' kind of guy to me."

"You try walking around in feudal Japan looking like this without knowing how to use a sword." Naruto remarked at Gin's questioning of his swordsmanship chops. Just because he wasn't a Shinigami and didn't practice swordfighting every day like an 11th Division member would. He'd never attest to being supernaturally elite level with a sword as kenjutsu had _never_ been anything he had particularly enjoyed, but he was damnably good otherwise.

Wielding his weapon with one hand, Gin tapped it on his own shoulder glibly, "Hey, just an observation." He stated before abruptly changing the subject, "Hey, Rangiku was here not too long ago wasn't she? How's she doing?" He asked as if he were speaking to an old friend of a friend.

It was weird, but not horribly disengaging as Naruto moved forward to clash blades with Gin again, "She's fine." He said, grunting as he struggled against his silver-haired foe, "Why? I didn't think you cared about anyone."

"Hey, I'm not heartless." Gin replied in a straining voice, showing deceptive strength against Naruto while doing so in order to keep him back. It was a battle he was slowly but surely losing, "A guy like me can have friends and people I care about too. I'm not that off-putting am I?"

"If you have precious people; friends, family, whatever…" Naruto started before getting an instep on Gin that allowed him to bully the former Shinigami captain backwards off of the rooftop and onto the air, "You try to protect them if you can. You definitely don't fight a war against them."

Gin slid to a stop, standing on the air with his blade still held in the same defensive position and his body still standing in the same posture he had been battling Naruto with. His head was lowered though so that the top part of his face was shadowed in the moonlit night. His grin was still fully visible though and it seemed to get a bit wider, "You know, you sure do seem like you have a _perfect_ opinion on that. But ya know, people might get offended when you talk like that about the choices they make. Did you ever think that people have reasons for the things they do?"

"It'd have to be a hell of a reason." Naruto said straightforwardly, no frills attached. He held the Raijin no Ken forward in a regular kendo stance from his place still on the roof, "Mind sharing why?"

"Not really." Gin replied matter-of-factly before making a grandiose drawback motion to prepare a stab, "I'll share this though! Ikorose, Shinsou (Shoot to Kill, God Spear)!"

Gin's sword blade turned white and extended right towards Naruto as he stabbed forward. Naruto barely saw it coming due to the speed of the blade's extension and was just able to twist his body to the side to keep it from running him clean through and leaned back limbo-style to avoid an attempt to cut him with the extended weapon, "Whoa!" Another attempt of the elongated sword to cut him managed to be stopped by Naruto's Raijin no Ken.

The weapon then retracted right back to its normal size just as fast as it had originally jutted out, leaving Naruto to stumble forward after previously pushing against the extended Shinsou. A grinning Gin then triggered the extension of his Shikai again, trying to take advantage of Naruto's misstep until he clearly missed via Naruto's own activation of Swift Release, "Hm. Didn't see that coming."

From seemingly the wind, Naruto reappeared with a fuuma shuriken in hand as he glided through the air at Gin in a rush of an attack. However Gin saw it coming and used his Shikai to impale the Naruto at a distance.

When he did though, another pair of Naruto's appeared from his blindspots, both holding Rasengans prepared to drive them into him. Gin was aware and turned around, swinging his elongated sword along with the motion, taking those two Narutos down as well in puffs of smoke.

All around, Narutos started appearing from the air in places all over, as if they were created from absolutely nothing. Gin looked around, highly on the defensive as more and more Narutos appeared, "Well would you look at that." And they just kept coming, "I can't even feel where the original is… his energy is spread out all over the place like a fog so I can't pinpoint him."

Having learned by now that he was unable to aptly hide in the presence of skilled enemies such as high level Shinigami seated officers that were already aware of his presence and had 'locked onto him' so to speak, Naruto picked up a new trick in his repeated spars with Yoruichi. Instead of trying to keep his chakra levels low (a futile effort to say the least) and hidden he would simply let it all hang out and coat the atmosphere of the area in it, moving all about rapidly while doing so.

A rather roundabout way to keep his moves hidden, and a skilled opponent could still feel the killing intent that would come when he finally moved to attack. This was the purpose for the clones. While they were unable to use Swift Release or any of Naruto's true hidden techniques including Sage Mode and the Rinnegan, they were great for disguising his intention to attack when using his strategy.

Still, Gin wasn't very concerned even though Naruto's attack was eminent and he had no real lock on him. While he was aware of the fact that the clones would try to pounce at the nearest opening he gave them to do so, and that Naruto would reappear and attack at a moment's notice, as long as Naruto was attacking the way he had been he would be able to avoid it because the generation of energy that any jutsu Naruto used, or the activation of the Rajin no Ken would tip him off in advance.

It was as if when Naruto would stop to attack he would be able to hear the low hum of the sword.

And speak of the devil, Gin immediately reacted to the whoosh of the Raijin no Ken, only to turn and find that the sword itself was left to fall to the ground instead of being used to attack him directly, "He dropped it?"

Another damn feint?

Gin instantly dove out of the way of a crushing punch from Naruto that he could feel the pure wind behind (something that would have blown him away if he had simply stepped back) and all of the clones in the vicinity dispelled, giving him room to flee.

After the clones dispelled, Naruto's eyes took on an orange pigmentation as a smirk formed on his face and he clapped his hands stiffly in front of his face with a resounding boom, "Kawazu Hadou (Frog Wave)!" A burst of nature chakra was released and forced out in a harsh 45 degree arc that sent Gin flying back through the air, forcing his body to slam into a water tower on another building rooftop, "You can't look left and right at the same time can you?"

The deep dent that Gin's body left in the water tower caused a pretty significant leak in it when he pulled himself free and cracked his back out, still smiling all the while, "Well that was a pretty nasty how-do-you-do. My ears are still ringing from that one. But now you have no weapon."

"Banshou Ten'in (Heavenly Attraction of All Creation)!"

Just like that, Naruto's Raijin no Ken flew right back into his hand, much to Gin's surprise, "Hm… that's a good trick." He then saw a grinning Naruto now with strange ripple-pattern eyes hold out his hand towards him in a similar manner, "…Oh crap."

"Get over here!" With the use of another Banshou Ten'in as it had been past five seconds, Naruto dragged Gin through the air towards him despite the man's best effort to stay away via a Shunpo. Gin was no Yoruichi when it came to generating force with his legs via Flash Steps, thus it was not enough to keep him from hurtling through the air towards Naruto and his waiting glowing sword of death uncontrollably. Of course, Naruto also then noticed Gin's grinning face and felt similar to the way that his opponent had felt moments ago, "…Oh crap."

"Ikorose, Shinsou (Shoot to Kill, God Spear)!"

XxX

(Soul Society – South Rukongai District 79 – Soi-Fon/Omaeda vs. Grimmjow/Yammy/Sexta Fracción)

"Hey now! Why are you just chasing me all over? Don't you want to go back and try to free your friends from my captain's Kidou?" Omaeda cried out questioningly as he continued to flee through the damaged and empty district with a mountain of a man that was taller and larger than even him chasing behind him.

He thought it was a good enough idea when before beginning the battle Soi-Fon told him that he would be fighting the weakest of the two untrapped enemies. However that didn't take into account the fact that he couldn't beat even the weakest of them either. Weaker than Grimmjow or not, Yammy would still squash him like a grape… if only if only he could catch up to him.

"Shut up!" Yammy retorted, heatedly pursuing the fat 2nd Division lieutenant fervently, "Some loser underling Shinigami like you really thought that his weak-ass Shikai would be enough to leave a scratch on me? That's an insult!"

"Weak?" Omaeda bristled at the taunt towards his Zanpakutou and quickly let his crushing ball and chain fly back at the Arrancar, "I'll show you just how 'weak' Gegetsuburi is!" His bluster was sorely misplaced when Yammy caught it right between his palms as if it were a recreational ball of some sort, "Gah!"

Grabbing the weapon tightly as Omaeda tried in vain to pull it free, Yammy seemed to take great pride in his next move of squeezing it to the point where it cracked and smashed underneath his efforts. A dark chuckle came from Yammy as he let the bits and pieces of Gegetsuburi fall from his hands to the ground.

Needless to say, whatever thoughts Omaeda had on winning that fight vanished right then and there. Still holding onto the chain that was in his hands, Omaeda turned tail once again and ran away yelling, much to Yammy's displeasure, "Get back here you coward! Face me like a real man and die like one!"

However, nearby in a battle with… a little more oomph to it one would say…

Having avoided Grimmjow's earlier Cero blast, Soi-Fon had managed to fight back to even ground against the blue-haired Espada. Still, she had yet to cut or stab him with her released Zanpakutou, two of which in the same spot would have signaled an end to the battle, no buts about it.

'These Espada… are on a completely different level.' As compared to the Arrancar forces she fought during her one excursion into Hueco Mundo not too long ago, Grimmjow was the equivalent of hundreds of them and more. She was faster than Grimmjow, she had that much, but his sheer Reiatsu was absurd. The strength he had been showing during that battle was simply impressive.

"Your weak Shikai is pathetic!" Grimmjow seemed offended by the sight of Soi-Fon's Shikai that was smaller than her unreleased Zanpakutou. It was as if she was mocking him by restraining her own power, at least that was what his battlelusting mind managed to string together when he saw it. If he let himself be wounded by that puny blade it would be the greatest affront of all.

Thus he attacked her relentlessly to keep her from returning fire and injuring him with the blade in case she was actually able to do so.

His rapid series of sword slashes were blocked by the gauntlet portion of Suzumebachi as she continued to clash with her adversary. Eventually she managed to deliver a kick to his stomach that pushed him back as well as herself and managed to stop his attacks, "Hadou #4: Byakurai (Way of Destruction #4: Pale Lightning)!" She pointed her index finger at her opponent and released a sudden burst of electricity directly at Grimmjow.

The blast collided right with his chest as the sound of crackling rang out, however other than a darkening singe mark from an electric burn, the move didn't puncture straight through him the way it should have. The benefit of his Hierro once again she assumed.

It was incredibly annoying.

A growl came from Grimmjow as through his open jacket the burn was very visible on his chest, "Grr… now that's more like it. Put a little more kick behind it next time though bitch."

"A little more you say?" Soi-Fon said, narrowing her eyes at the extremely vulgar and brutal elite of Aizen's army. Well she could give him a little more if that was what he wanted. It wasn't in her nature or her battle style to make things loud.

That didn't mean she couldn't though.

Tossing her captain's haori aside, Soi-Fon was left in an outfit with no back and sleeves that got Grimmjow to raise an eyebrow at what she was doing, "If you're trying to strip in front of me to throw me off you can save it. I'd rather see if from a woman that actually has a rack."

Ignoring that very offensive remark, Soi-Fon simply took a breath and started charging her own energy, "This still isn't complete like Yoruichi-sama's… but for you it should do." Invisible pressurized Kidou energy erupted from her back and her arms and seemed to kick up a wind around her body that waved her hair and loose debris around, "Shunkou (Flash Cry)."

Grimmjow's brows rose in interest at the sight of Soi-Fon's increase in power, prompting him to let out a bit of a chuckle, "Heh, no kidding? You were keeping something like that to yourself here?" Suddenly fighting these Shinigami was starting to seem more interesting.

From a position a ways away, Grimmjow's Fracción were still bound to each other by Soi-Fon's opening use of a light-based Kidou in a sneak attack and they were all growing in worry at Soi-Fon's increase in power. It wasn't even her Bankai yet apparently, "Grimmjow!" Shawlong shouted as he still found himself stuck in place.

"Stop bitching!" Grimmjow snapped at him in return. He didn't need anyone messing up his battle right then, "If you're that worried then you should have used your Resurrección in the first place to break it and get out!" Like he was supposed to care that they were just supposed to sit and watch? Not likely.

But that just made them all stop and wonder just why they hadn't done something that obvious in the first place. Perhaps the fact that being caught and left helpless took away their foremost thinking ability? Either way, it didn't matter at that point.

"Tate, Tijireta (Snip, Five-Pincered Insect)!"

"Okiro, Volcánica (Erupt, Volcanic Beast)!"

Just two of Grimmjow's five Fracción were able to activate their Resurrección due to them being the only ones holding their swords at the time, but they were all it took to break the binding Kidou, releasing their true power and changing form.

Shawlong's mask extended down his face to cover the left side of it like some sort of helmet, the protrusion to the side becoming a tail with a clawed tip. His arms and chest became covered in bone-like armor with his hands turning into long claws.

The large Arrancar with the half-shaved head and half wild red hair transformed with his mask turning into wings on both sides of his face. His arms grew white and massive with extensions growing up past his shoulders that had exhaust spouts in them.

Shawlong looked at his fellow transformed comrade and got a nod from the large Arrancar as they turned back towards Grimmjow and Soi-Fon, "Let's take the Shinigami captain down Edrad. With the two of us and Grimmjow she can't win." The large Arrancar, named Edrad, prepared to attack along with him.

"You stay out of it or I'll kick you aside myself!" Grimmjow ordered to the rest of them before they could attack Soi-Fon, "She's mi-. What?" He turned back towards her and saw that she was no longer there. But she hadn't chosen to attack him. If that weren't the case then there was only one other thing she could have been doing. And it didn't bode well for his subordinates, "Di Roy! Nakeem! Yylfordt! Move!"

Only Di Roy was able to avoid the next move, heeding Grimmjow's words to the letter and vacating the area as fast as he was able. It saved his hammerheaded life unlike the other two that found themselves completely blown away and blown apart by a pair of punches from Soi-Fon's Shunkou-enhanced offense.

A smirking Soi-Fon was still in motion from the calculated attacks on Grimmjow's recently freed Fracción after having just killed two of them, almost tearing the bodies of Yylfordt and Nakeem apart with the intense energy behind her already extremely potent hand-to-hand talents, "If you thought I was going to let them bring out their true power as well just like your other two underlings to make this six-on-one you're crazy. But now they're out of the way at least."

Grimmjow and his remaining Fracción glared hatefully at Soi-Fon who had just exterminated two of them like vermin, "Hey…" Grimmjow said, "I never said you could just fuck with my Fracción. Or are you just buying time off of fighting me?"

"Well if I see an opening-." Soi-Fon started to say before disappearing from sight again, targeting Di Roy who was the weakest link still standing amongst them.

Before she could attack him though, Grimmjow fired a Cero in the direction of Di Roy's weakest area that would be preyed upon when she attacked him. Instead of going through with finishing off Di Roy, Soi-Fon's efforts were switched to neutralizing the Cero with her Shunkou's properties.

After basically seeing his life flash before his eyes, Di Roy wasn't one to look a gift horse opening to attack in the mouth and charged up a Cero in his right eye, preparing to try and blow Soi-Fon away.

"Getsuga Tenshou (Moon Fang Heaven-Piercer)!"

Instead of getting an attack off on the 2nd Division leader, Di Roy was obliterated by a crescent wave of energy that hit him before he was finished charging up his technique. His Hierro was completely unable to stand up to it despite its powerful defensive properties and he was destroyed within one move. As they watched their comrade fall, Shawlong and Edorad observed the appearance of a Shinigami with an oversized Zanpakutou and spiky orange hair along with a very large teen with dark skin and a strangely black and purple armored right arm that looked something like a shield.

"Four against one isn't really that fair." Ichigo said, having used his element of surprise to take down Di Roy in a hurry, "Now three-on-three… that sounds much better."

Instead of a show of gratitude, Soi-Fon scoffed at Ichigo, "Kurosaki you fool. That was the best opening you could find to take advantage of? They actually weren't feeling out for your massive Reiatsu signature, and one was all you could take down with such an advantage?"

Ichigo rolled his eyes with Zangetsu set over his shoulder at her rather rude and blunt greeting. And here he thought he and Chad were being good guys by hustling out from the point where Urahara's portal dropped them off to help out with all of the massive powers they felt, "Yeah, yeah… sure, sure. I just-." He stopped speaking to Soi-Fon in order to block an attack directed at him from Shawlong's claws.

"You came here to battle against enemies and then you ignore them to banter with your comrade?" Shawlong said, pressing against Ichigo's sword in combat.

In return, Ichigo pushed back and quickly overpowered him, "Not comrades. More like acquaintances." He replied as he shoved back and started building his energy up, "If you guys are the ones that killed all of the people and Shinigami around here, I guess I'll show you the same mercy you showed them. Bankai!"

'A Shinigami's Bankai?' None of the Arrancar had ever seen one before, but they found themselves underwhelmed by Ichigo's when he transformed his outfit into a long black coat and his Zanpakutou into a skinny black sword that made him look weaker than he originally appeared to be.

Grimmjow just grunted at Ichigo, never taking his eyes off of Soi-Fon in case she attacked again, 'These Shinigami all think they can get over against us with these wimpy techniques of theirs.' With that he held his sword up threateningly, "Now where were we?" While he beckoned her forth into combat once more, he was perceptive enough to see that her Shunkou would nullify his Hierro on contact the way it did to his Cero from before.

But he'd be damned if he would admit that Soi-Fon was capable of defeating him. He was the one that was supposed to be the king.

"Kurosaki." Soi-Fon barked to get his attention, "Go help my stupid lieutenant before he gets killed. You should be able to handle something that simple, right?"

Ichigo fought the urge to outright flip her off, but could see the damage being wrought by another huge Reiatsu that was dwarfing Omaeda's nearby. Thus it was clear that she had a point, "Chad can you take the big guy here?"

A nod came from the large teen of Mexican descent as he stepped forward to fight Edorad, "Yes." His firm statement got a scoff out of the large Arrancar, but it didn't seem to bother Chad at all, "You can take on the other guy."

Edrad let out a laugh at Chad stepping forward to fight him, but his Fracción partner Shawlong didn't share his amusement.

"So you think you can just get past us so easily?" He blurred out of sight with his speed before appearing at Ichigo's side, shoving his claws right through the young man's side, "How disrespectful." There was no concern shown from Chad or Soi-Fon who had gone back to fighting Grimmjow at this point. Shawlong didn't realize why until just as the Ichigo he had stabbed vanished as an afterimage, and a sharp pain ripped through his own side, eliciting a deep gasp from him, "H-How?"

"Don't judge a book by its cover." Ichigo said, his sword stabbed through his adversary's side, "Tensa Zangetsu (Heaven Chain Slaying Moon) isn't a big, flashy Bankai, but if you don't think it's still strong then you're the one being disrespectful. Getsuga Tenshou (Moon Fang Heaven-Piercer)!" He unleashed a black crescent energy blade as he ripped the sword through Shawlong and destroyed him thoroughly.

From there he didn't say another word before going forward with Soi-Fon's request to save Omaeda from being destroyed by Yammy. How he was still managing to outrun him, many of them would never know.

While Edrad stood stunned at the effortless defeat of Shawlong, he was forced to block a heavy punch that came his way from Chad's right arm. Even though he blocked it, he was sent sliding back a dozen meters where he lowered his guard to glare at the young man, "Heh. TIhat was actually pretty good… for a human. It didn't come close though against my Resurrección form. And if your arm is the only thing with power this is going to be quick."

"That wasn't my real attack power." Chad still had his arms up in a prepared fighting stance with his right arm leading the way like the shield that it appeared to be from its appearance, "I don't enjoy fighting and I had hoped that would have defeated you."

"Afraid not." Edrad smirked and his arms began to burn with fire, "My Hierro in this form is several times stronger than in my unreleased state. An Arrancar grows in strength greatly when they release their Zanpakutou." With that he released a blast of fire at Chad to shield a punch that smashed into his right shield arm and sent the young man flying back, "No matter how dangerous your right arm looks it won't do you well against me!"

He was rather impressed with the fact that other than knocking Chad away, that arm alone was able to protect his body, "This arm is meant to protect. That's what it's truly meant to do." Despite the steam flying off of his right arm where he had blocked Edrad's punch, it was still holding strong.

_(Flashback – Days after the Final Battle with the Bounts)_

_Even after his victory over Go Koga during the final assault of their most recent enemies, Chad was well aware that his win was conditional as if not for Noba trapping the metal doll Dalk in one of his wormholes he eventually would have lost more than likely._

_Thus he reasserted himself to training his arm's power more than ever. And his target of choice as always was the Shukaku shield constructed by Gaara's hardest minerals… that Gaara always repaired no matter how hard Chad seemed to hit it._

_And so once again he stood exhausted in front of the motionless shield of Gaara that seemed to be mocking him at how it remained so sturdy and still standing after all he had done to improve his strength, "It's impossible…"_

"_Nothing is impossible." Gaara said plainly with his arms crossed, standing off to the side as a casual observer… and so he could keep repairing the shield, "You don't have the will to do violence. The intent to attack, you lack it. If you don't possess that, against any enemy worth speaking of, you will be destroyed. You'll jeopardize the lives of your friends instead of just your own."_

_Instead of saying anything, Chad watched as Gaara walked in front of him and stopped, forcing the young man to look at him as he proceeded to make his point._

"_What will you do? What choice do you have?" Gaara started to say, to get his meaning across, "What if your enemy is someone that simply will not accept defeat? Someone with a will that cannot be broken, and their goals coincide with the destruction of everything you hold dear. I'm asking you this because it is exactly what we face. Our enemy is looking to eradicate all life in Karakura Town, in order to gain the opportunity to destroy the balance of the world of the living and dead. He has an army willing to kill anyone in their way to achieve his objective. Defending oneself will not be enough."_

"_I won't let that happen."_

"_Staying defensive won't protect anyone Yasutora-san." Never one to sugarcoat anything, Gaara simply said it as was, "Trying to be a shield can only do so much. At times you must be willing to fight back just as ferociously as your enemy. I can see that you recognize this." Chad nodded, remembering the vow he made to only fight to protect others, "I will not ask you to seek battle out. I never would. But when it comes to you, I expect nothing less than you doing what you need to in order to end the conflicts that come your way. Don't be afraid of your strength harming others, because the only ones that you will harm will be those that try to hurt the people around you. Find your will to attack."_

(End Flashback)

'And I have.' Chad thought to himself as he tightly formed a fist with his left arm. His will to fight led to his right arm evolving once more and to gain more strength, but it did something else as well, 'I always wondered why my right arm was the one that received its power when I was actually left-handed.' With that, a liquid covered his left arm all the way up to a single spike at the top of his shoulder and solidified into a sleek white layer with red markings.

Edrad raised an eyebrow at the new form of Chad's left arm and his sudden boost of Reiatsu that had not been present before, "And what would you call this?"

Looking at his newly powered left arm, Chad found no problems in answering, "Brazo Izquierda del Diablo (Left Arm of the Devil)." The stoic young man looked up at his hulking enemy and spoke, not with arrogance but with the utmost brutal honesty he could muster, "You won't survive my next attack." He stated as he opened his hand and at his fingertips five disks of energy were generated.

"Funny." Edrad replied, charging both of his arms with the heat of his Reiatsu to the point where they turned red-hot, "I was just about to say the same thing to you." He tried to overwhelm Chad with the speed of his Sonido as he hadn't shown any actual quickness until that point, but when he got to the position behind him he saw that Chad was no longer there, "What?"

A strong right hand grasped his shoulder and held him in place like a vice as Chad closed his left fist and had it cocked back to strike with power rippling through it, "La Muerte (The Death)." Chad then punched him right in the base of the spine full force.

Edrad felt as if everything inside of his body either shattered or liquidized from the punch, and the excess power from the hit flew out from his untouched front side where there were absurd excesses of it.

If it were openly visible for all to see it would have been in the shape of a massive skull.

At that point, Chad just let the lifeless body of Edrad fall to the ground. He looked around at all of the lifeless people and Shinigami that had been there before he and Ichigo had ever arrived on the scene. While he didn't like killing, if this was the alternative on a larger scale should he not fight he could deal with a battle every now and then.

XxX

(Karakura Town – Karakura Train Station – Hidan vs. Luppi)

Despite being thoroughly insulted and enraged by Hidan's disparaging remarks on his delicate appearance at the outset of their meeting, it didn't take long for Luppi to get his previous arrogant attitude back after cooling down for a moment, "A fight against an Arrancar that sides with the Shinigami? I can honestly say that I didn't see that coming today when I left Hueco Mundo for this mission."

"I ain't siding with any Shinigami." Hidan bluntly stated before the two vanished in Sonido and reappeared clashing their respective weaponry, "I just don't feel like being impressed upon by some crotch stain like that Aizen guy. But I've got to say, I'm excited to be fighting an Arrancar to the death! That's pretty new!" He outright cackled.

His sheer excited lunacy at fighting against a fellow Arrancar in such a manner caused his control over his Reiatsu to spill out of control, forcing Luppi to feel the brunt of it as he started trying to strike at Hidan with his Zanpakutou, 'He's got Espada-level power?' That couldn't be right. He himself was just promoted to the class of Espada, and this brute had never even been touched by Aizen's influence?

It was okay though. All he had to do was one simple thing and then he could start overpowering Hidan and kicking him around the skies like he knew he could.

"You're excited?" Luppi asked, staring off at the grinning silver-haired opposition, "Well if you've never fought an Arrancar to the death before it's clear you've never seen a Resurrección either have you? Lucky you, you get to see one today." He held up his Zanpakutou and uttered its release phrase, "Kubire, Trepadora (Strangle, Climbing Vine)!"

Right before Hidan's eyes, Luppi gained what looked like a body vest of bone with some octagonal piece on his back where eight enormous tentacles were centralized from. A bone cowl also appeared around his head in place of his previous mask fragment.

Still though, instead of looking intimidated, Hidan simply licked his lips in anticipation of the forthcoming fight and attacked head-on again, trying to go right ahead and cut straight through Luppi, "You were probably an _ugly_-ass Hollow weren't you!" He shouted as he did so.

"Lanza Tentáculo (Lance Tentacle)!" Luppi had a tentacle stab forward like a spear, forcing Hidan to break off his attack to swing his scythe and knock it back, "You can't cut my Hierro that easily on the tentacles you know. They're my main weapon."

"That's okay." Hidan replied, "I'll just cut your head off and skip all of that."

Laughter came from Luppi who did not feel threatened by Hidan despite his large amount of power radiating from him. It was clear that he was a purely close-range fighter. That wasn't going to fly tonight. Not against him, "Feel free to try and get close enough, I'm sure getting your skull crushed by a few tentacle shots will change that for you. Your Resurrección must really suck if you don't want to use it yet."

"You're not worth my Resurrección!" Hidan cried out as he attacked again across the air. This pretty-boy, chick-looking dude was going to get maimed by way of his triple-bladed scythe come hell or high water.

"Are you sure about that?" Luppi said with a smug expression before sending every one of his eight tentacles at Hidan in an attack that would come at him from all sides with speed and force, "Jaula Tentáculo (Cage Tentacle)!"

Hidan was able to fend off the first few tentacles that came at him straightforward with the well-trained use of his scythe, but had to stop in order to use kicks via his taijutsu to try and knock them away. Still, it was eight different appendages attacking him, and eventually two managed to grab him, one around the leg and another around the arm to bind him in place.

"Gah motherfucker! You think this can hold me here?" Hidan shouted angrily, trying to fight his way free while swinging his scythe with his free hand at the other tentacles that seemed to be picking their spots and waiting for an opening to get at him. He went to cut himself free of one of the tentacles binding his leg, but that allowed another one to strike at him like a cobra, pummeling him in the head to keep him from cutting one off.

From that point it was child's play for Luppi to hold onto to all four of Hidan's limbs and keep him in place at his mercy, "Ha ha. Not so tough now are you?" He taunted, using his four extra tentacles to periodically pummel Hidan's body and punish him in that manner. His Hierro was rather tough if he was able to sustain himself without being battered to jelly by then though, "What's wrong? Weren't you going to cut my head off?"

Hidan simply grit his teeth angrily and took the beating from the smug Octava Espada, 'Bitch just keep on talking.' He had a plan and he was going to see it out despite the thrashing he kept taking, 'Hit me. Beat me. Knock the hell out of me for as long as you want. Get tired, because then you're mine.' His Hierro would keep him from taking any fatal damage even if Luppi started marking him up.

XxX

(Tatsuki vs. Grand Fisher)

"You're slow!" Tatsuki shouted as she delivered a savage kick to the head of the creature that was four times her size in height and width. The kick slammed the large Arrancar into the wall of the underside of the bridge that they were fighting beneath. She landed on the ground and backflipped to get some distance back between herself and Grand Fisher, "Are you really an Arrancar? You're super-wimpy."

Hell, kicking Arrancar-Hidan in the stomach made her feel like she had kicked an engine block. This guy was doughy like a person. He may have had muscular tree-trunk arms, but she wouldn't be surprised if all of that fur on his body hid a gut behind it.

However it was quite obvious that Grand Fisher took offense to being called wimpy by this human high-school girl that only had a pair of (flaming) knuckle-dusters from hell on her hands to fight him with, "That's it…" He drew his massive Zanpakutou the size of a two story house and brandished it threateningly, "I don't even need to cut you with my sword to crush you like a bug!" He lifted the weapon overhead, but the sword was too large and smashed into the underside of the bridge.

Tatsuki grit her teeth in something of a flinch before storming forward speedily and leaping at the mammoth while spinning her body, "Houou Tsubasa (Phoenix Wing)!" Tatsuki slammed an elbow into Grand Fisher's stomach to release a burst of fire, using her other hand as leverage before spinning through and delivering a kick and a leaping uppercut with her flaming trench knife that caused a surge of flames from the point of impact, knocking the huge Arrancar back from beneath the bridge, "You could have killed someone above us if you'd stabbed through the bridge you asshole!"

"Act like a hero all you want…" Grand Fisher said, standing up from where he was knocked down. Now he was out in the night air down by the riverside and was more upset than ever with the burnt fur on his chest that was cut through by Tatsuki's weapon, "It just makes you easier to kill."

He waited for Tatsuki to get from beneath the bridge and then swung his sword at her with nothing in the way to stop him, but she was quick, jumping out of the way where she stood atop the surface of the river, well out of his reach where she pulled down her eyelid and stuck out her tongue at him.

Grand Fisher growled at her before smirking through the mask that covered a lot of the upper portion and lower portion of his face. While it shouldn't have surprised Tatsuki, it still did when he started using his ability to walk on the air to circumvent her recent advantage to make one of his own, "You may be quicker, but I'm more mobile than you girl!" He swung his sword horizontally over the surface of the river and smashed it into Tatsuki who got her trench knives up to block and prevent herself from being sliced in half, eliciting a cackle from him.

Her body skipped across the surface of the water before she regained her footing much like she had multiple times before to keep herself upright during her battles against her friends and her teacher. A laugh got her attention to where she saw Grand Fisher standing on the air, gloating down at her.

Oh, so another one of these bastards didn't want to fight on the ground? How many times was she going to see this happen? She was getting so sick of them doing that.

"I can skewer you from the sky girl!"

Tatsuki had to dodge as Grand Fisher looked to make good on his threat to kill her from above with his Zanpakutou. It was like he was trying to show off. Not much to show off though. He was getting his ass kicked all over the underside of that bridge until he started flying. Maybe she should have stayed under there, because instead of the people that may have been driving above she was in danger now.

Well… she _did_ have one move that could help. It was just…

"This is going to melt my fucking shoes." Tatsuki muttered to herself, quickly removing her socks and shoes before throwing them back onto land, 'Twenty-six hand-seals. Soooo many hand-seals…' There was no time like the present though, and she got right to work on those harshly memorized seals.

Grand Fisher just watched her in rapt amusement, finding hilarity in the strange motion of the fingers on her hands, "Is this some kind of strange prayer? You humans have so many religions I can't keep it straight in the end." He laughed.

"Were you a Menos?"

"Huh?" He stopped laughing at the question presented to him by the girl who was trying to figure out the correct sequence of hand-seals to finish her technique.

Why did it have to take so many to activate? And how did Naruto and Gaara make doing so many of them look so easy? Hidan never even did any period. Oh well, stall for as long as you can if that's what you need, "You said you were a Hollow before. So what kind of a Hollow were you?"

"I was not a mindless Gillian-class Menos." But he wasn't an Adhujas-class. He never evolved that far. No, he was just a regular Hollow that got off on eating human souls and slaying any run-of-the-mill Shinigami that managed to get to him and try to destroy him. Thus he was an imperfect Arrancar, not that he would ever admit to such, "Why would it matter to you, someone who is going to die in just a few moments?"

"Because I just needed to buy some time until I got these hand-seals right, and I just did. Thanks sucker." Tatsuki said with a vicious grin on her face as she clapped her hands together to end her streak of hand-seals, "Katon: Kasai no Ame (Fire Release: Rain of Fire)!"

From her hands and legs Tatsuki started using punches and kicks, shooting off dozens of screaming rockets of fire that exploded in the air around Grand Fisher into smaller bomblets. They blasted him with shrapnel-like chakra that started burning the fur off of his body and scorching his carcass itself underneath, softening him up for the other salvos that didn't have the fur to block the burns and the shrapnel wounds. His Hierro was basically nonexistent and he was taking critical injuries.

Down below, still launching rocket after rocket with her punches and kicks, Tatsuki was starting to pant at the short-term chakra cost of the jutsu, but damned if it wasn't majorly useful, because that big slow bastard just couldn't get away from it.

"_You need a big time jutsu Tatsuki-chan. Eventually you're going to fight someone that you can't punch, and I can't teach you how to fly up and reach them... because the only reason I can 'fly' is because of the Rinnegan. So let's get you some techniques with some range behind them. Pretty soon I can teach you how to make your own moves aside from the nintaijutsu moves you've made up."_

'Naruto-sensei is so awesome.' Tatsuki thought to herself as she continued the bombardment, "I wanted to save this for the end of the week to show my sensei to surprise him, but then you had to show your ugly face and hang out in the air away from me! That means you get to see it first!"

Grand Fisher let out a roar of pain and anger and seemed to grow even larger than before to continue to dwarf Tatsuki even further. Now there were horns jutting out from his shoulders and he looked none too pleased by Tatsuki's quite damaging offense, "The day I get driven to revealing my true power to a lowly human girl!"

"All you did was get bigger you prick!" Tatsuki shouted up at him in return in regards to his 'true power' being revealed. For all his yelling about true power his Reiatsu didn't even increase. Nothing else really changed about him at all other than the fact that he got bigger.

At this point Grand Fisher was seeing pure red with nothing in his sights other than a very deceptively strong human girl. Tatsuki didn't back down either, choosing to instead stand and fight with her trench knives held up in her fighting stance, still on fire.

He was finished testing his Arrancar body out in battle on this girl. It was more trouble than it was worth because she was actually doling out a beating to him, something that made no sense at all. She was absolutely puny. If she weighed even 100 pounds soaking wet he would eat his Zanpakutou. And yet she had harmed him so badly.

"I'll crush you in one move! I won't stop until you're a corpse floating in that river!" With that, Grand Fisher charged directly down and forward right at her intent on cutting straight through her, trench knives be damned.

Tatsuki took a deep breath and formed a Rasengan in one of the hands she took a trench knife off of. Instead of preparing to use it against Grand Fisher though, she had a better idea, and slammed the spinning chakra orb into the river, kicking up a huge wall of water.

This occurred right before Grand Fisher sliced right down onto it, dredging up a bigger splash but hitting no Tatsuki, much to his surprise. He had never seen her leave where she had been standing at all.

"Shoukyaku Tettsui (Incinerating Iron Hammer)!"

Standing on Grand Fisher's back, Tatsuki aimed both of her hands in a hammer-fist motion with the sharp teeth of her trench knives pointing downward. The flaming knives stabbed directly into the base of Grand Fisher's skull with enough force to cause a plume of flames to expel outward from where Tatsuki had hit him, scorching the air around her and shimmering across the top of the river.

The fire dissipated and left Tatsuki standing on the back of the floating lifeless body of the horribly burned and recently deceased Grand Fisher, panting at the amount of effort she had put into the last attack, "*pant* It doesn't matter how big you are… if I sever your spine you'll be just as dead as anything else." She got off of him and started walking her way back to shore, soaked to the bone from her waterlogged battle, "Your Reiatsu wasn't that much stronger than mine anyway. That's what you get for thinking I was weak."

As she reached shore though, she heard clapping and her attention was directed to the top of the hill closer to the street where she had to squint to make sure she was seeing who she thought she was seeing, "…Kurosaki-san?"

There Isshin stood, clapping reservedly, but that wasn't even the weird thing about it. He was wearing the clothing of a Shinigami to boot, complete with a Zanpakutou at his waist, "Now that was pretty impressive. I guess you're all grown up from the little girl that used to kick Ichigo's ass at the dojo all the time aren't you?" She simply stared at him owlishly, prompting him to sigh.

He had originally been planning on killing off Grand Fisher once he felt the Hollow's familiar Reiatsu once again, but when he had gotten there Tatsuki had been fighting him already. She hadn't been doing a terrible job of it either, which led to him simply standing and watching to see just what she could do. He'd step in before she was killed, but she wasn't put in dire straits at all. She defeated him soundly with only minor injuries dealt to herself.

"I've known you since you were a little girl Tatsuki." Isshin said as he motioned for her to walk up the hill to where he was, "I think you and I should have a little talk about you fighting these things." Much to his surprise she fixed him with a rather withering glare, complete with hands on her hips.

"I think we need to have a talk too." She said, walking off in no particular direction as she seemingly talked to herself. It wasn't like there were any people walking about, nor were there any people around that could see Isshin as he was, "Geez! Is there anyone I _don't_ know that's a Shinigami or a monster hunter or whatever?"

XxX

(Downtown Karakura Town – Gaara vs. Apacci/Mila Rose/Sun)

"By all means…" Gaara said, holding up his Shukaku claw halberd of a Zanpakutou as he faced down the three female Arrancar warriors standing in the air before him, "Use your Resurrección. It may increase your chances of winning… but it probably won't." The three women all looked at each other with varying degrees of anger between them at what Gaara had just said, but in a show of uncharacteristic impatience Gaara simply got sick of waiting, "Very well. If you won't attack I will."

"Like hell you wi-!" Apacci started to say before Gaara disappeared from sight with Sonido, reappearing amongst all three of them where in one sweeping motion of his halberd he cut into all three of the Fracción.

Gaara stood in his well-studied battle stance after cutting into his enemies and watched them as they held their wounds from his swift assault. Apacci sported a deep gash on her back from the clawed weapon, Sung-Sun's right arm had ribbons cut out of it, bleeding down the sleeve of the white uniform, and Mila Rose was cut across her abdomen right where her Hollow hole was.

And now the women were faced with the fact that thus far their combined assault had not dealt any damage to Gaara and that he was handling them almost casually. It was as if they were fighting against Harribel with the massive discrepancy in their abilities. He had badly wounded all three of them with one move and no wasted effort whatsoever.

Well fine then. If their Resurrección was the only way to fix it they would have to use it. Besides, it wasn't like Gaara himself would activate his own in return. He had already declared openly that he would do no such thing in a place with so many living creatures like Karakura Town.

"Shimekorose, Anaconda (Strangle to Death, White Snake Princess)!" Sung-Sun proceeded to become engulfed in a pink glow before her transformation became seen. She kept the upper half of her uniform with the only thing changing being a furry black necklace and the fact that her mask fragment extended towards the back of her head, covering half of it like a cobra's hood, but from the stomach down she gained a white anaconda's body right to the tail.

"Kuichirase, Leona (Devour, Lioness)!" Mila Rose gained a more complete mask fragment on the top of her head with a yellow lion's mane extending from it. She lost her uniform altogether in exchange for a pair of boots that went up to her thighs, a bone armored thong and two bone claws holding her breasts, and a new appearance for her broadsword.

"Tsukiagero, Cierva (Thrust, Doe)!" Apacci's form changed to where she grew antlers from her mask fragment on her head. In addition to that her body became covered in brown fur with a deer-like tail protruding from her backside and her feet changing to hooves.

Merely standing back and observing the changes that happened in the matter of a second after they had released their power, Gaara shut his eyes and let their respective energies wash over him, "How lucky you three are." He began to say, "Able to release your true power without having it harm those around you that you do not wish to hurt."

Apacci let out a laugh, "Ha. I wish my Resurrección would hurt these bitches when I use it. Maybe then it would show them all who the strongest around here is."

"You? Stronger than me?" Mila Rose let out a bark of laughter in return, "If we fought I'd crush you like a bug and you know it." The two started to butt heads and shove each other back and forth as they began bickering.

Sung-Sun watched for a moment before choosing to interject with a sigh, holding one of her sleeves in front of her mouth as she spoke, "I keep telling you two that all of this arguing just makes you two look weak, but you never seem to listen to me. You're lucky he hasn't chosen to attack either of you yet." Not wasting anymore words, she pointed her sleeves out at Gaara and fired a wave of snakes at him with their mouths open.

Gaara was prepared however, having never taken his eyes off of any of them from the outset of their transformations. Freeing one hand from his halberd his hand began to glow red and he punched out towards the snakes coming his way, "Bala (Hollow Bullet)!"

The snakes were destroyed in the ensuing explosion, but Gaara was then forced to defend from Mila Rose's sword attack with the pole portion of his weapon of choice.

"Mila Rose move!" Apacci had a pair of attacks charged in both of her hands and fired them before her partner ever even disengaged from Gaara, knowing that she would escape, "Bala (Hollow Bullet)!" She needed a fast attack to hit Gaara. Instead of something strong she needed a sure-fire maneuver that would make contact.

And she actually managed to hit him. Two blasts exploded off of Gaara's frame the instant that Mila Rose got clear. The timing couldn't have been cut any closer (or better in this case) if they had actually coordinated the events beforehand.

It almost put Apacci in a haze of disbelief that she had actually hit him. No one had even laid a hand on Gaara prior to right then. But just like that she and her partners all followed up from where they had him boxed in, blasting away with Bala after Bala from all sides, with each of them making contact again and again.

"Three released Arrancar, it's simply too much for any one unreleased Arrancar to defeat on their own!" Mila Rose shouted as she started to charge up an orange Cero in her left hand, preparing to punch it with her right, "No matter even if you _are_ far stronger than each of us separately!"

Following Mila Rose's own lead as they felt that Gaara had been sufficiently softened up enough, Sung-Sun began charging up a pink Cero in her right sleeve while Apacci charged a red one between her antlers, with all three firing simultaneously, resulting in an explosive backlash that sent all three of them away via the shockwave of their three attacks.

Nevertheless, they all recovered quickly and gazed upon the smoke filling the sky from their successful attacks. Nothing was stirring from within and nothing had fallen from the sky, making Apacci believe they had vaporized the red-haired Arrancar within the massive cloud, "Ha! Too bad, but once we started we weren't going stop until you were dead."

"It is rather unfortunate though." Sung-Sun commented, still hiding her mouth with her sleeve, "He was far more pleasant than the other Arrancar that chooses to fraternize with the enemy."

"If he's too afraid to release his Resurrección because of what it could do then good riddance. He's too weak-hearted." Mila Rose stated bluntly, crossing her arms over her ample bosom as she surveyed the damage. She then snapped back into a defensive posture with her Zanpakutou once she felt a massive buildup of power from the site of their attack.

From within the smoke as it dissipated, Gaara still stood in the air. His white desert robe had been utterly destroyed, leaving him in the tan pants and sandals he wore underneath. Burns covered his body from the separate Cero attacks that the Tres Fracción managed to hit him with all at once, but he seemed unmoved by it as a yellow pulsating orb the size of a soccer ball sat above his head, "I fail to see how having empathy for other living creatures is a sign of weakness." He stated in his normal dry manner, arms crossed over his chest as he still held his halberd.

Needless to say, the women were all thoroughly stunned that not only was Gaara still standing with enough power to do whatever it was he was currently choosing to do, but that he wasn't even registering the damage they dealt him. He wasn't panting, holding any part of his body in pain… other than the light bleeding, the loss of his robe and scarf, and his burns he didn't seem to have anything other than aesthetic wounds.

"H-How?" Apacci muttered softly at the sight of Gaara. It was just unthinkable. And he hadn't even released his Resurrección yet. That was terrifying. Maybe they should have heeded their mistress and her words during their first meeting with Gaara and chose to stay away from fighting him. Even before the current mission she told them to engage anyone other than him. This was obviously why, "We had to have hit you over a dozen times each, and then we all shot a Cero at you. That was all we had."

"And it hurt. It hurt badly." Gaara said in regards to their efforts to destroy him, "It was a good move, you must have trusted in your partner greatly to escape in time to hit me with the first blasts. But if I cannot take the full measure of those attacks that would mean that I've gotten weaker. It's good to see I'm still as strong as I was before I chose to sleep." With that, Gaara used the tip of his halberd to poke at the yellow ball of his own Reiryoku above his head, "Cero Disidente (Splitting Cero)!"

The moment the blade touched what was supposed to be a Cero it split into three different blasts, one for Apacci, one for Sung-Sun, and one for Mila Rose, with all three of them being the size of their own best Cero.

All three tried to flee and dodge the attacks but to their horror the blasts followed them and shot them straight out of the sky.

Gaara watched impassively as the three smoking females fell from the skies right before his eyes, "This is only one of several abilities I've developed without utilizing my Resurrección; a Cero that can split and fire at multiple enemies at once with the power of my original version. With this variation I can also hone in on a target instead of just a regular fire-and-forget Cero. I am not afraid of my own power, I just know how to use it to its fullest extent before drawing upon more."

XxX

(Meanwhile – Mother Base – Rooftop)

It hadn't taken any effort at all for Harribel to dispose of both Ururu and Jinta without the use of her Zanpakutou. She was able to casually defeat both children within five moves each and had neatly deposited both of their unconscious bodies onto the rooftop where she turned her attention to Nel who had been frozen in fear while watching all of this occur in a matter of seconds.

The Tres Espada was not one to kill her enemies when the practice was thoroughly unnecessary, thus she did the least amount of damage necessary to get the two human children out of her way. But standing before her was her predecessor in Aizen's army of Arrancar, though her body was not at all reflective of this, "As I've just said Nelliel… it is time for you to return to Hueco Mundo."

Nel was on her backside, having crawled back towards the edge of the roof at this point out of fear of Harribel's obviously obscene power that she couldn't hide, not when she was this close to her, "W-Why do you want Nel to go back? Nel isn't a soldier. Nel can't fight."

Instead of continuing on towards the scared little girl, Harribel stopped five feet short of standing over her and crouched down closer to her level to look at her, the bottom half of her face concealed by her high collar, "Nelliel, you _were_. There's something wrong that caused you to be this way, an injury of some sort. You were a powerful Arrancar. An Espada. You actually held my rank before you disappeared."

The eyes of Nel widened significantly. This was pretty much unbelievable to her, but someone like Harribel wasn't a liar. She seemed to be speaking earnestly, and quite honestly she could have just grabbed her and left at that point if she had really wished to do so.

Seeing that she still had Nel's attention and not because she was scared of her now, Harribel continued to speak, "Come with me and my Fracción. We can return you to Aizen-sama and he can heal you. Whatever is wrong he can find a way to fix you and return you to the way that you were. You can be an Espada again."

"B-But Nel doesn't wanna leave. Nel likes it here." Nel said, shaking at the thought of returning to Hueco Mundo with all of the powerful presences and with only Pesche, Dondochakka, and Bawabawa to keep her company, "Can Nel just… not go?"

"That's… not an option I'm afraid." Harribel said with something of a sigh coming from her, "You're too strong to be left inactive and on the side of the enemy to boot. I'm sorry, but you have to come with me. You can bring Pesche and Dondochakka as they were with you back in those days as well, but no one else."

"Nel!"

Both Dondochakka and Pesche appeared, attacking Harribel from behind with a kanabou and a sword comprised of Reishi respectively. Harribel dodged the two of them instead of choosing to block and risk harming Nel in her child state.

After avoiding the two attacks, Harribel faced off with the two of them, holding onto the still sheathed Zanpakutou on her back. Dondochakka and Pesche both moved in front of Nel defensively as they faced down their Espada foe.

"We can't let you take Nel." Pesche said, more serious than he had ever sounded before despite the odds against him, "Even as an Espada Nelliel hated fighting. Now as a child she never has to fight again, and in this world under the protection of this place that's more certain than it ever was in Hueco Mundo."

Dondochakka picked up where his friend and partner had left off, "You ain't taking her back into all of that. you'll have to go through us don'tcha know."

"I would rather not." Harribel openly admitted, "You all are still technically a part of this army, members of Aizen-sama's army. I'd prefer not to fight at all if it could be helped. Nelliel is very important to the Espada, and you two are her Fracción. You are her precious underlings."

"If she's so damn important then where was Aizen when Nelliel got-!" Pesche started to spout angrily until he realized that Nel was right there behind them. He didn't want to risk bringing up any latent memories of what had happened to her. She had been happy without knowing at all, and finding out what had happened to her several years ago could only cause her pain, "Nevermind… Nel, run away and find one of the stronger people. Call Urahara-san's shop."

He didn't know that Urahara and Tessai were busy manning and maintaining the portal to the Soul Society for Ichigo and Chad and that they wouldn't be able to be disturbed without showing up to the shop in person and locating him in his basement training room.

At this point Harribel drew her blade by one of the holes in her guard and held it in one finger before spinning it to grab a hold of the hilt, "I can't let you do that. Do you really think that you can hold me off long enough for her to do such a thing?" She didn't wait for an answer and immediately utilized Sonido to attack.

She managed to catch the two prepared Arrancar off-guard and slashed at Dondochakka hard enough to get him to stumble back. Harribel threw her Zanpakutou to her other hand in order to block Pesche's attempt at a counterattack. In return she kicked him in the head hard enough to knock him off of the roof, smashing off an edge of it with his body as he fell over the edge.

"Pesche!" Dondochakka opened his mouth and began charging a yellow Cero, but he wasn't far enough away from Harribel to have the time to do it correctly. She smashed the top of his head, closing his mouth shut and forcing it to detonate inside of his mouth just as he planned on firing it.

He fell directly backwards onto the rooftop as a beaten Pesche managed to reach the roof again and attack, this time firing a green translucent liquid from his mouth all over the roof to mess with her footing to try and keep her airborne in the fight and away from Nel.

Harribel did not fall for this and merely stayed in place, instead choosing to charge up yellow spiritual energy in the hollow portion of her sword's blade, "Ola Azul (Blue Wave Gun)!" She swung her sword at the defender and blasted him away again, this time with blood flying through the air upon contact with energy projectile and flesh.

"Dondochakka! Pesche!" Nel cried out desperately as she watched her two brothers fall at the hand of the calm and quite beautiful soldier of Aizen's Arrancar army. It was as if she hadn't even been trying. She had dispatched the two of them with the same efficiency as Jinta and Ururu only it had taken slightly longer to do so. She crawled over to Dondochakka's downed frame and shook him desperately, "Dondochakka come on, get up! Stop layin' down!"

The large and strange Arrancar opened his mouth and coughed out blood and a plume of smoke in response, "Nel… run. Please. Don't tell me we were still too weak to protect you. Even after all of these years."

The little girl started to cry as she had just seen her friends Jinta and Ururu and her brothers Pesche and Dondochakka get dominated in no time at all. She turned her tear-filled eyes towards the person that had done it as Harribel was simply staring impassively at her.

'I didn't kill any of them. I won't do any such thing without a reason, but they needed to be out of the way.' Harribel thought to herself. She stopped at that point as she could feel the presence of her Fracción fade after they had all used their Resurrección, but she didn't feel it fall to a fatal level, 'So they were fool enough to challenge the Arrancar Gaara after all. I told them it was foolish. At least he isn't one to outright kill his enemies.'

Her thoughts to herself on her Fracción and how she would go to retrieve them after obtaining Nel happened to be cut short when she felt a harsh burst of power from said little girl. Enough to shove her back a step. She had to cover her eyes as the outpouring energy was enough to blind one looking too closely, in addition to being forceful enough to crack the roof beneath her.

Eventually it subsided and Harribel was able to gaze upon Nel once more, her face showing no visible surprise and her posture not betraying this in any way as she spoke, "I thought an injury kept you from this form. So this is the true figure of my predecessor." She said aloud sounding quite interested in this development.

Nel's form was now that of a very curvaceous, fully grown woman. She had very long blue-green hair and the skull mask on the top of her head now resembled something adult-like as well instead of the cartoonish skull from before. She still retained the red marking that spanned across her nose and cheeks, and she still had the scar on her face and the damage to her mask fragment as well as her green gown, torn though it was, the bottom portion somehow fitting around her hips to make something of a skirt and the upper half making a very small top that showed the bottom portions of her breasts and the massive '3' tattoo on her back.

"Welcome back Nelliel." Harribel said as Nel simply stared at her with an unreadable expression on her face.

* * *

**Ah, and now I will commence to studying for my litany of tests for good measure before I take Spring Break next week. Why does my college let me out for Spring Break so early as it's only the first week of March? I don't know, nor do I particularly care. And that's one thing that we have in common.**

**Until the next time folks, I hope it was enjoyable.**

**Kenchi out.**


	28. Bleeding Heart Pugilist

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. I want Kishimoto and Kubo in the steel cage! Winner takes all! I'll take you both on the same time and I'll defeat you both to take the rights to your respective mangas! Don't be scared, it's just a little blood… and pain!

And then I'll move the main offices to Canada, because that's how I roll!

**Chapter 28: Bleeding Heart Pugilist**

* * *

Reeling in one's enemy with the attractive force of the Banshou Ten'in (Heavenly Attraction of All Creation)? A good idea for Uzumaki Naruto. He was the kind of guy that liked to get up close and personal in order to maul his opponent, and with what he had seen of Ichimaru Gin's Shikai, it was more than likely for the best that he kept the battle close.

Until the last use of the aforementioned jutsu didn't prevent Gin from unleashing his vaunted Shikai, with him coming right towards Naruto, his blade extending forward like a bullet fired from the chamber of a rifle.

With no time to dodge, Gin grinned as he saw blood fly through the air, proof positive that he had indeed stabbed Naruto through. His grin slipped a bit when he saw exactly where he had stabbed him, "Well I'll be damned. I missed?"

"No… I just slowed it down a bit." Naruto replied with a bit of a strain in his voice. He was holding both of his hands out forward, one posted in front of the other. Both were stabbed clean through by Gin's Zanpakutou, but behind them Naruto's vital spots had not been hit. He had managed to move his body to get stabbed in the area just where his shoulder and chest met. He was fine in the grand scheme of things, "Your aim sucks…" He joked, "Maybe you should open your eyes next time."

Gin's Zanpakutou retracted and he spared a bit of a chuckle, "Most people would be more concerned with a wound like that, but you're here cracking wise with holes in your hands and chest. I like that."

Naruto returned his sentiment with a laugh, but concealed his hands from view in the loose sleeves of his sage coat so that Gin couldn't see them twitch, 'Great. Good thing I'm in Sage Mode, so this won't slow my hand-seals down by too much.' Gin's Reiatsu was smothering in how it permeated the area, the power was incredible. This was definitely a Shinigami captain, "You're a weird guy. I don't know what to make of you."

"Meh… thinking too hard doesn't really get you anywhere. Why bother?" Gin tossed his Zanpakutou in his hand before shooting it out at Naruto again, "Ikorose, Shinsou (Shoot to Kill, God Spear)!"

Ducking the attack and losing a few stray blonde hairs for his trouble, Naruto decided that being far away was really not a strategy worth trying to work out and headed in to pound Gin's skull in. As a method of cover, Naruto's right hand turned into something of a laser cannon that he charged up before blasting pure chakra at his silver-haired foe.

The sheer heat from the blast was felt by Gin enough to singe him slightly even though he was able to dodge and avoid the move. There was plenty of sky to maneuver around in, and he had noticed that while Naruto was speedy on the ground and he wasn't a slouch in the air either, he was slower up there, "What are you some kind of cyborg or something?"

"Or something." Naruto said dryly as his arm compounded back to normal as if it hadn't looked like a futuristic weapon just a moment ago, "This isn't a good place for a fight like this you know." He said as he got in close as Gin's Zanpakutou retracted once more.

Having felt just how good Naruto's taijutsu was when it came to hitting an opponent without even needing to touch them, Gin quickly backpedaled and used Shunpo to leave his range in its entirety, "I know. I saw you fight Yamamoto-sotaichou back at the Soukyoku. We need a good few square miles if we really want to fight, so why don't we just stop?" He said, immediately sheathing his Zanpakutou.

That… wasn't what Naruto had been expecting. This was a bad guy wasn't it? Bad guys usually didn't give a flip about how much property damage they would cause during any kind of battle. At least that was his experience with going head-to-head against his own foes.

Gin seemingly answered Naruto's unasked question with a shrug, "A fight with you to the finish would just end up getting too many Karakura Town citizens killed. We need every soul we can get to form the Ouken (King's Key), remember? We'd definitely wind up taking out at least a thousand by accident." His grin then grew as he seemingly saw something behind Naruto that was amusing, "Watch your back now."

Naruto's awareness while in Sage Mode allowed him to feel the massive amounts of Reiatsu behind the attack coming all the way and he simply slipped out of its path, catching a hand that moved past him that had been intending to pierce straight through his chest. How brutally simple. And such a simple childlike approach to attacking of course came from the strange child that had been accompanying Gin to the battlefield, the Wonderweiss kid.

Even though Naruto had caught his attack, Wonderweiss didn't seem to care at all, still with that same vapid expression on his face that never seemed to change, "Uhwaaahh…?"

"You might as well just hit him. Mercy for a child isn't going to do you much good here." Gin said with a hapless shrug, "Wonderweiss doesn't have any rationale, memory, any kind of intelligence really. He's a shell. And he _will_ kill you just so you know." Naruto saw a gleam of activity in the eyes of Wonderweiss and threw him preemptively as he started forming a purple Cero at his mouth, "Heads up!" Gin joked as he caught Wonderweiss in one hand by his uniform as the child sailed overhead.

"That is one strong kid." Naruto pointed out as Wonderweiss had power within him that could put most of the Shinigami he had sensed in the Seireitei to shame. He had to stop and stare with his Rinnegan eyes at him, "How old is he? He can't be any older than ten years old."

"As an Arrancar he's more like a month old." Gin said with his ever-present grin still plastered on his face as he could see the twitch of surprise on Naruto's, "Scary ain't it? An Arrancar's ability to fight is natural. Instinctual, kind of like their Hollow abilities. Yep, I can say that Aizen-san really didn't screw up using the Hougyoku on Hollow powers this time."

"He's still saying he screwed up on us is he?"

Both Naruto and Gin looked directly up in the sky above them to see Shinji floating upside down coolly as he used one hand to hold his newsboy cap on his short-cut blonde hair. That was weird. Now that he was there Naruto could sense him, but before that he hadn't felt his presence. The effects of having Gin's Reiatsu fill the area he surmised.

The new arrival of the Visored warrior did nothing to remove Gin's smile from his face. If anything he looked as if he had just seen an old friend after many years, "Ah, this party's certainly starting to fill up isn't it? Hirako-san, how are things?"

"Just great." Shinji said cheerfully, "I love being in exile from the Soul Society for over one hundred years doing nothing in a warehouse at the edge of Karakura… do you have any idea how boring it is in this town? Things are just now starting to get interesting, but nothing ever happened here before this. I met this guy though, so that's something." He said, pointing towards Naruto without even looking at him, "I can only wonder how bored he usually is, what with the immortality and all."

"Yeah, but it helps when I invest in things though." Naruto chimed in with a shrug to defend his ongoing existence, "Do you know how much money I've made on inventions and businesses in the last 120 years?" If he had to compare it to something his life was kind of like watching a mediocre TV series that every so often would have something amazing happen that would blow you away; you stayed hooked in just for those particular moments.

"Anyway…" Shiji righted himself in the air and gave an emotionless gaze that was sent Gin's way, "I came to see what all the hubbub was about tonight. Don't you people know that others are trying to sleep? Go flare your Reiatsu in the mountains or something where sensible spiritually aware folks can't feel it. It's like an earthquake."

"Sorry."

"My bad."

"Wuuoaahgghh…"

"…Wonderweiss says he sorry… I think."

Shaking his head, Shinji lowered himself down to the level of altitude that Gin and Naruto were at, "No, don't be. This seems pretty interesting after all. I didn't think I'd actually run into one of you three here Gin. What a wonderful surprise."

"I just love seeing the sights and the nightlife you know?" Gin's joke wasn't well received apparently as he then had to quickly draw his sword to block Shinji's quickly drawn Zanpakutou, "Not a fan?"

Naruto just stared in shock as he watched Shinji and Gin begin to streak across the sky with the sound of blades clashing ringing out. Did Shinji just step in and take his fight right from under his nose? Of all the inconsiderate… did anyone he was acquainted with actually show him respect? Honestly.

Although to be honest Shinji had more of a reason to fight with Gin than he did, so in that regard he couldn't blame his fellow blonde for getting all riled up. If Aizen were there the entire Visored warehouse hideout probably would have cleared out.

Turning his head, Naruto once again found himself in the company of the dull Wonderweiss Margera who was giving him the equivalent of a thousand-yard stare with his mouth hanging open. Who the hell brought a guy, kid, Arrancar, or whatever, like him to fight a battle? That seemed completely asinine.

He still had to keep an eye on him though. The second he let Wonderweiss out of his sight that would be when he started trying to kick his ass like the first time. And he didn't want to fight a child, no way no how. Not like this. An Arrancar child was still a child.

Yeah, he was such a bleeding heart good guy. But he'd made it that far being the way he was, so why change?

Shinji clearly had a bone to pick with Gin, hence why the battle all across the sky was continuing to rage without surcease. With the output of Reiatsu coming from the two at every instance it didn't seem like either was going to give any quarter. And since Naruto refused to fight Wonderweiss, that just left hanging out with Wonderweiss, "So… what's up?"

XxX

(Hidan vs. Luppi)

"You suuuuuck!" An extremely battered and bloodied Hidan bellowed at Luppi, still being restrained by the Arrancar's tentacles that came with his Resurrección. For the hundredth time it seemed, he then received a barrage of shots to the head and body from the other remaining four extra appendages, "Wow, I know they're colored like marshmallows, but that doesn't mean that the blows from them have to feel like it too!"

Luppi was getting more and more annoyed. He was strong, he knew he was. When he hit something, especially in Resurrección, it was going to break, no questions asked. So why wouldn't this ignorant fool crumble? Why wouldn't he go limp and just die? He was cracking jokes, antagonizing Luppi to hit harder and harder and grinning manically all the while.

"Why don't you just curl up and die already?" A sneer was on Luppi's effeminate face as his breaths started coming out heavier and heavier. Landing haymaker after haymaker was taxing, 'His Hierro can't be that strong. I'm hurting him badly, I know I am!' And why wasn't he using his Resurrección to escape? What did his Resurrección even do?

"You're not gonna cry are you?" Hidan said with a bloody smirk, "Aww… your mascara will run if you do that." Another shot to the head got him to start cackling wildly, "Ha! Sensitive are we? Just like a wom-!" His words choked in his throat as Luppi began to strangle him with a tentacle.

Why didn't he just do that from the start? That certainly shut Hidan up. Sweet silence filled Luppi's ears as he continued to choke the life out of Hidan. He'd get to enjoy draining the life right from him. Maybe he could even squeeze hard enough to break his neck. That would really be something.

Wait, he wasn't struggling for air. He was just grinning at him still, even when Luppi tried tightening his grip further he got nothing out of it.

"It's like wearing a really uncomfortable tie…" Hidan quipped as Luppi kept trying to strangle the life out of him. The silver-haired devil then leaned his head forward far enough to seize a portion of Luppi's outstretched tentacle in his teeth as he began carnivorously ripping and tearing at it as if he were a coyote biting off its own leg in a trap. It wasn't the normal portion that Luppi had been beating him with so even with Hierro it wasn't as hard as the normal part.

Despite the humanoid appearance, an Arrancar was still a Hollow at heart. This still didn't make it any less shocking to see Hidan use his teeth to free his neck from Luppi's tentacle. But that put another thought to mind. Luppi's tentacles were hard enough to be considered lethal weapons, and Hidan had just bitten through one. So that begged the question of just how hard was his Hierro? Even if he hadn't bitten through the toughest part of the tentacle, he had still ripped right through it with his teeth.

"Didn't you ever learn not to play with your prey when you're hunting?" Hidan said, managing to flex his wrist about despite still being bound by Luppi, This allowed him to aim his hand in Luppi's direction as a purple energy blast began to form in it, "Sometimes what you're after can kill you right back! Cero (Hollow Flash)!"

Luppi's eyes widened and he shielded himself as best he could with his remaining three free tentacles when the blast collided with him, but he still suffered noticeable injury and seethed at Hidan who had been freed in Luppi's shock of him so casually firing his Cero. Luppi then realized that his tentacles had helped him fire it as they had anchored him to his position so that he wasn't blown back from the force of the blast. That was why it looked so casual.

"Hah!" Luppi laughed off the light wounds dealt to his person as he lorded his seven remaining tentacles over Hidan, "This doesn't change anything. You're a complete mess right now. Compared to you I'm barely scratched."

"You're supposed to be the eighth strongest right?"

Confusion flew across Luppi's face at Hidan's question. How random. What did it matter really? "Yes idiot. That's the meaning of being the Octava Espada. It means I'm the eighth most powerful Arrancar in Aizen-sama's army."

"Damn…" Hidan cursed as he wiped his own blood from his face, "Uzumaki-brat killed the last Octava Espada. I thought I would at least get to kill one that was stronger than the one he got to kill. That wimpy weird scientist one. But you don't seem to be that much stronger… if you even are any stronger. You don't hit like you are."

Narrowing his eyes on Hidan's form, Luppi's tentacles waved around, showing the irritation that he wouldn't let show on his face or in his conscious actions, "What are you saying?"

"I let you catch me like that dumbass, so I could see just how strong you were."

"You lie!"

"It doesn't matter what you believe when you're dead so think whatever you want!"

"Shut up!" Luppi lifted his tentacles with an insane look on his face and pointed them at Hidan, red beams forming on the tips of them, "Prisma Tentáculo Cero (Prism Tentacle Cero)!" Focusing them all into one beam he blasted a focused thin laser of a Cero at Hidan.

Not anticipating just how fast it would be in comparison to every Cero he had seen in the past, Hidan wasn't allowed enough time to dodge and wound up getting wounded straight through his stomach, much to his surprise, "Gah! Not… bad." It shot clean through him. It was definitely right up there with the single fastest attacks he had ever seen. It was especially up there in one of the ones he ever had the misfortune to feel. Far faster than even a Bala. There just wasn't any comparison in speed.

"I know." Luppi seemed quite pleased with himself and began to laugh as once again the battle seemed well in hand for him, "You had me all flustered and forgetting my technique just so I could hurt you and make you eat those words and your own blood as well, but I wasn't thinking. Sorry, but I'm through with you, so do me a favor and just pass on. Hierro Virgen (Iron Maiden)."

Luppi's tentacles grew spikes on the ends of them, making them far more wicked weapons for battering his foes than before. If they could crush before, now they could crush, impale, and shred a flesh and blood body like cheese.

Bad news for Hidan.

"Not good enough either." Hidan muttered lowly as Luppi sent his tentacles out his way to try and render him to hamburger. Holding up his scythe he death-dueled against the seven remaining appendages, "Even with your little spike tentacles, you're tired."

'Impossible.' Luppi's eye began to twitch at the sight of the injured Hidan still with enough physical strength to beat back all seven of his tentacles, 'He's not even in his Resurrección!'

"I train with a guy that can make dozens of himself! Seven stupid tentacles aren't enough to slow me down!" Yeah, he was in pain, but none of it was really debilitating. The laser Cero wound went through him so quickly that it cauterized itself, and if it hadn't killed him on impact it wasn't going to kill him at all, "Don't tell me this is the best you've got!"

His brazen statement turned Luppi's trepidation to anger. Why was Hidan so strong? Only an Arrancar made via Aizen's Hougyoku could have such incredible potential. All other naturally formed Arrancar were far weaker than him. It didn't make sense.

He didn't know, and Hidan didn't care enough to bring attention to the fact that he had indeed become an Arrancar within the presence of Aizen and the Hougyoku, somehow activating it with his sheer will to defy Aizen's wish to use his power for his own devices.

Retracting his tentacles back to their normal length, Luppi watched Hidan barrel right towards him. The ignorant brute. Was going forward all he knew how to do? Someone was certainly in touch with their Hollow instincts, "La Hélice (The Propeller)!"

Stopping short of running into Luppi doing his best impression of a helicopter, Hidan channeled energy to his fists and began blasting away with repeated Bala attacks, but the whirling action of Luppi's tentacles deflected each speedy bullet sent his way.

Eventually the extra appendages extended and went out towards Hidan as he dodged skillfully. Gritting his teeth as he was tired of Luppi's roundabout way of attacking, Hidan started returning fire and hacking his way against Luppi's special attack like some kind of crazed anarchist until he managed to get close enough to cut at his actual body directly.

The reckless berserker attack had positive results for Hidan as he managed to slice Luppi's entire right arm off. Not bad. The bloodshed was a mighty worthwhile payoff after an entire battle that tested Hidan's crappy excuse for patience. It was almost therapeutic to watch the limb fall from Luppi's body in the sky to the ground below.

Did that really just happen?

Luppi had the most shell-shocked look on his face conceivable as blood spurted from his right shoulder where nothing was attached beyond that point. It was as if he hadn't even registered the pain of the injury, instead concerning himself with just how it was possible, 'I'm in Resurrección… and he could cut through my Hierro without it?' Only a stronger Espada could do such a thing.

The difference in strength between Espada of just one number differential was highly significant, and though he would never think of such a thing, Luppi was a mere replacement Espada, not originally intended to become one, but was used to fill a slot. He wasn't as strong as Szayel Aporro Granz, even away from Las Noches where Szayel Aporro was nearly unbeatable.

A little too late he discovered that him fighting against Hidan as he was, was like a green newly promoted army officer leading a mission all on his own against a suicidal enemy that cared nothing for the consequences of their actions. To deal with a complete madman when you weren't willing to match the depths of his depravity you just needed more experience. Experience, cunning, and good tactics. It was as simple as that.

Still stunned, Luppi didn't drift back into awareness until he felt Hidan tightly grab onto the body vest of bone that was the main portion of his Resurrección. By the time he felt the tug it was too late to do anything about it, "Nooooo! Raaaghh!" He screamed in pain when Hidan ripped it right off of him. It wasn't just there for aesthetics, it was actually a part of him, and Hidan bloodily tore it off of his body.

The cries of anguish and pain were like music to Hidan's ears as blood splashed on his face. For as fun as it was to run through the Hollows in Hueco Mundo, there was just something about the pained shouts of intelligent creatures that he enjoyed… sick bastard, "Jashin-sama will be pleased with this.

A now thoroughly disarmed Luppi, bleeding from the shoulder where he no longer had an arm and from his chest and back where the bone vest that had been the origin of his tentacles was now gone, bleeding from deep holes where it had been rooted in his body, had officially had all of the fight drained out of him, "Damn you…" Luppi hissed hatefully as blood randomly spewed from the holes in his body and his shoulder, "Damn you straight to hell… damn you straight to hell!"

"You first." Hidan said with a wicked grin before letting loose a single swing of his scythe that cut Luppi clean in half at the waist. The last thing the falling Espada saw as he hurtled to the ground from the air was a blood-soaked and battle-marked Hidan mockingly waving goodbye to him before it all went dark.

XxX

(Soul Society – South Rukongai District 79 – Ichigo vs. Yammy)

Omaeda figured he was dead. Yammy had torn apart that entire district trying to corner him. The Arrancar was a full foot taller than Omaeda's near seven feet of height and he was double his size, and it wasn't just for show the way Omaeda's was. He wasn't as physically imposing as his size would have initially let on, but Yammy was and then some.

So when he found himself downed with a grinning Yammy about to crush his skull with a punch he thought he was a dead man.

Until he opened his eyes and saw his saving grace in a long black coat… with the spikiest orange hair he had ever seen.

Wait, he knew that guy. That guy knocked him out with one punch that broke his Zanpakutou a few months ago. What was his name again? He didn't really catch it before he had gotten flattened, "Uh… Kurosaki?"

"Yeah?" Ichigo said in his Bankai form, holding back Yammy's punch with one single hand much to the towering Espada's surprise and confusion.

"Great… I know your name." Omaeda said as he started scooting away on his backside to get his distance and get as far away from the two as he could. He didn't stand a chance if he got caught in that crossfire, and Soi-Fon always told him that if he was going to be useless he should do it out of the way of people that are strong, "You've got this then!"

That was an incredibly mean thing to say to one's lieutenant, but it could still be interpreted as good advice. Especially at a time like right then.

Ignoring the pest that he could just find and squash later, Yammy turned his attention to the skinny Shinigami that had stopped his attack, "You're way stronger than that weakling aren't you?" Ichigo nodded without a second thought and Yammy let out a happy laugh, "Suerte! Let's see what a real Shinigami can do in battle!"

Raising an eyebrow at the boisterous attitude of his to-be opponent, Ichigo idly wondered why so many Hollows seemed to be excited to fight Shinigami. He knew that there was a hatred there, and that was understandable, but did Hollows that fought Shinigami actually kill enough of them for many of them to think they had a chance? It didn't seem like it from his point of view.

But as Yammy lifted his hand for a second punch he figured it wasn't his place to be a spiritual sociologist. He was a fighter, and if this was an Espada it was time to see just how good of one he had become since training with Naruto's weird Visored friends. Fighting Bounts was one thing, combat with an Arrancar was another.

He got a quick answer to his question of just how good he was, when his Bankai Zanpakutou Tensa Zangetsu sliced right through Yammy's arm at the forearm, cleaving it right off.

Didn't these guys have skin that was hard to hurt or something? Trying to cut Hidan was a total pain or so he had heard. Or was he just strong enough where it didn't matter against this guy? Wait, it might have been because Yammy wasn't using his Resurrección and he had busted out his Bankai right from the start.

"Oops." Ichigo said as if he didn't know his own strength after Yammy recoiled and started rampaging through the ruined district cursing and smashing what was already broken, "I thought you'd be stronger, but if you're the one that did this to this town you deserve worse than just your arm being gone." He finished with a hard look in his eyes.

Quickly channeling his pain and turning it to anger at the one that hurt him, Yammy's dark gaze turned Ichigo's way once more, "If everyone here was weak enough to let it happen to them then good riddance." And with that he stomped on the ground hard enough to force a strong tremor that would have disrupted Ichigo's balance had he not jumped into the air to avoid it. This however left him an easy target for a cackling Yammy who had a method of attack already in mind, "Bala (Hollow Bullet)!"

Caught in the air, Ichigo had to block as the first blast hit him. Hearing the contact explosion, Yammy started blindly firing Bala after Bala with one hand into the blast smoke to make Ichigo suffer.

"Stupid brat." Yammy grunted out as he continued to fire away aimlessly. He wasn't going to stop until he saw a puny Shinigami pissant drop to the ground. He might have been better advised to stop, because when the hand of said 'stupid brat' grabbed his shoulder from behind, Yammy was quite confused, "Huh?" Turning around he took a heavy punch right to the face that flattened him and knocked him away from Ichigo through the remnants of another building.

Not really the best idea on Ichigo's part as he immediately shook out his hand that he had used to hit Yammy, "Okay, so that whole steel skin thing isn't just a catchy name after all…" Ichigo said to himself as he could hear the bones in his right hand crack around as he tried to flex it out. As he was dealing with his own thing, he had to cover his eyes to protect them from the debris kicked up by a crater that had been blown into the ground right in front of him.

From the crater, out jumped Soi-Fon as she backflipped away from it rapidly, being followed doggedly by Grimmjow, who looked to be having a whale of a time fighting against her, "This is more like it! Do you see who the king is yet or do you need a better example?" His response was that he was somehow nicked on his open chest by Soi-Fon's Zanpakutou, leaving a black butterfly mark there the size of the wound.

"One more touch in that spot and it doesn't matter if you were the king or not." Soi-Fon said, standing not too far away from Ichigo in front of him, her Shunkou still active, "You'd still be just as dead as a nobody." Though it wasn't visible if one wasn't looking for it, sweat was beading on her forehead from the effort she was exerting, 'Yoruichi-sama was right… I really haven't mastered the Shunkou yet.' But she needed it if she was going to wound the skin of an Arrancar to form her signature technique's mark. Without Shunkou she simply wasn't generating enough force with her attacks to cut or puncture him with her blade. She'd already played that game without it.

Grimmjow scoffed at the thought that he had let Soi-Fon cut him so casually and stepped forward to continue the battle when everyone stopped and paid attention to a sudden shift in the air. The sky tore open with a Garganta as dozens of Hollows of all shapes and sizes fell out and onto the ground all around the remnants of the district.

A sneer came to Soi-Fon's face at the unneeded intrusion, "Reinforcements perhaps?"

Though Grimmjow paid her no mind and turned towards the sky, he began to scream angrily at the figure that emerged from it. He already knew which one of Aizen's lackeys were shoring up this little escapade, "Tousen! Go back to Hueco Mundo! I don't need anyone's help to finish this by myself!"

In the sky stood the former Shinigami captain, the blind and dark-skinned Tousen Kaname alongside another Espada presumably. This Arrancar had pale skin, messy black hair, a mask remnant that existed on half of his head like a broken and horned helmet. He wore the usual Arrancar uniform for Aizen's army and his face was quite downcast with line markings going down from his eyes looking like tears.

"Finish this?" Tousen said calmly with some authority in his voice, "This is over now. You've lost all of your Fracción. Your mission was to test the capabilities of our enemy to respond, not to lead Aizen-sama's soldiers to their deaths." He couldn't see the look on Grimmjow's face, but with his senses he knew when he was being ignored and felt Grimmjow turn away to get back to business with Soi-Fon and maybe Ichigo too if he were dumb enough to step in, "You'll return now. The mission is complete and so are your extracurricular activities."

Grimmjow rolled his eyes but figured that he had broken enough rules today and had seen enough to be better equipped to fight a captain next time around, "Alright." He said as he wiped away the blood on his chest from where Soi-Fon cut him. At that point he grinned evilly and pointed his blood-covered hand out at Soi-Fon and Ichigo as an unstable, crackling blue energy formed in it, "Just kidding! Gran Rey Cero (Royal Hollow Flash)!"

From his hand, a massive and oppressively strong Cero was fired, speedily streaking through the air like a bolt at Ichigo and Soi-Fon who went wide-eyed at the sheer power behind it. The attack fluctuated in size wildly, showing how thoroughly unstable it was as it blasted into them both and left a titanic trench in the ground from where Grimmjow had been standing to far back from where he had been aiming.

With a smirk he turned and saw that Yammy had already gone up to retreat. The lesser Hollows would make for a nice little parting gift for the Gotei 13 to have to clean up for a while.

Shoving his hands back into his pocket, Grimmjow drifted up leisurely to retreat as Tousen had been waiting for him at the Garganta that his other Espada escort and Yammy had already gone through. Looking quite pleased with himself, Grimmjow stopped before going back through the portal, "There… if they survive that then maybe you can say they're worth something. But if not, you just wasted my time by making me go back to Las Noches."

Before Grimmjow could move past him after having spoken his peace, Tousen grabbed him by the arm and turned him around before silently pointing at Soi-Fon's mark that was still on his chest. With that, the justice-fueled former Shinigami captain went through the portal and left Grimmjow behind as he glared back to the end of where his trench had been carved with his powerful Cero before he too retreated within, allowing it to close behind him.

XxX

The surrounding forested landscape that sat around the South Rukongai 79th District had been devastated and now had a brand new trench that could be later patched up and called a road, or perhaps could be converted to an irrigation ditch… well not anymore since there was no life left in the broken down district anymore.

And at the end of that trench, having been blown all the way back there from the force of Grimmjow's sudden act of violence there happened to be both Ichigo and Soi-Fon, both of them looking severely damaged and burned from the Gran Rey Cero, with one significant change to Ichigo that helped him stand up to the move, **"Ow…"** Ichigo said in his distorted voice as his Hollow mask adorned his face. The power then faded and his mask broke to keep Soi-Fon from getting a good chance to identify what it was, "You're alive and well aren't you Soi-Fon?"

With the battle seemingly over, Soi-Fon finally released her Shunkou and had to fight to keep her knees from shaking, "Don't use my name without an honorific Kurosaki…" She said as she surveyed the devastation of the entire district and the portion of forest that they were driven back into. She had felt the odd power from Ichigo, but decided that grilling him about it directly at the moment wouldn't do much for her, "So those were the Espada."

They were strong. Grimmjow was very, very strong. Ichigo had to release a quick Getsuga Tenshou and Soi-Fon had to let loose a quick Kidou blast to prevent themselves from being blown apart by Grimmjow's sneak attack.

"Yes. Well… they were two of them anyway."

Making his appearance with Tessai at his side, Urahara walked over and surveyed the scene as well. Meanwhile Ichigo just stared at him with a twitching eye, "You opened the portal and came through right along with us. So tell me why you didn't think it was a good enough idea to get off of your ass and help us out!"

"Generals don't fight." Urahara quipped, pulling out his fan to cover his amused smile, "That's what the underlings are for… underling." Before Ichigo could jump at him to try and strangle him he changed his tone, "Koga's helping Chad contain the Hollows that were released here, but there are too many going in too many directions for the two of them to get them all. If we don't move fast they'll reach a different district with an actual population and begin killing Soul Society denizens. We still have work to do tonight."

Ichigo nodded and started looking around as his ability to sense Reiatsu still left much to be desired. He only began moving when Urahara and Tessai pointed in the general direction that Koga and Chad couldn't cover and split between the two of them.

That left Urahara to direct his attention to the glare that was directed at his back by Soi-Fon, "You know… Yoruichi doesn't stay at my shop anymore. She lives at Naruto's base, so I don't know why you're still so hostile to me all the time. Be pissed off at Naruto."

"Uzumaki does indeed make me sick, but I still blame you for Yoruichi-sama leaving the Soul Society to begin with." Soi-Fon reasoned with him, getting a sigh out of Urahara, "That's not important right now though."

Urahara nodded in agreement to her statement, "Right. What's important is that you can't even walk right now."

"That's not true at all." Soi-Fon disputed with a glare only to get Urahara smiling back at her and pointing at the ground in front of him, directing her to walk over there to prove it, "I would never willingly choose to be that close to anyone like you unless I have a good reason… such as ending your wretched life."

"Okay…" Urahara said with a smirk. Even a blind man could see that he was about to tease Soi-Fon now that he was certain she couldn't retaliate, "If you can walk over to me without collapsing I'll let you kick the crap out of me until you get tired and I'll make Yoruichi come back to the Seireitei to visit more often… I'll even throw in a tied up Naruto delivered to your office, but I probably won't need to do that to make him go."

Soi-Fon just narrowed her eyes at Urahara since she knew that she probably wouldn't make it, "...What in the world makes you think that I give a damn whether or not Uzumaki shows his face?"

"So does that mean that you aren't going to try it?"

XxX

(Human World – Downtown Karakura Town)

At first she heard voices.

Sung-Sun was quite certain that they had been killed by Gaara's attack. But as she became aware of the fact that she was waking up and that not only was she alive, both Mila Rose and Apacci were as well she opened her eyes and weakly sat up from where she was laying on the ground in the street.

No longer were any of them in their Resurrección forms because of their complete lack of energy to maintain it, and every last one of them were sporting telltale signs of just what kind of number Gaara did on them with his last move.

A splitting and homing Cero blast? How in the world did he manage such manipulation of his Reiryoku without using his true form?

But as she looked around, not too far away she saw Gaara standing still shirtless as they had destroyed his robe in the battle. Only here he was facing off against some kind of Shinigami; a strange looking man with a large afro who was shakily holding up his Zanpakutou at Gaara, "I know what you are. You're members of Aizen Sousuke's army!"

"For the last time Shinigami-san, that is not the case." Gaara said as if he were having to repeat himself to a child, "I am on your side, and as you can see my opponents are quite thoroughly defeated. You can put your weapon away and carry on with your evening." Why did the Seireitei station a Shinigami in Karakura Town after what happened with Rukia and with them knowing that Ichigo was there to boot?

And why'd it have to be a weak one like this person?

Kurumadani Zennosuke wasn't foolish enough to ignore the amount of power he could feel from Gaara, but while he knew of the group known as Equilibrium he wasn't about to believe that an Arrancar was an ally… even if they were a fringe group… and if Gaara did look like he was telling the truth because he definitely looked as if he had been in quite the fight.

But he didn't look like he was leaving, so with a roll of his eyes Gaara quickly flared his Reiatsu as high as he could without using his Resurrección, "Leave or get yourself hurt please. If I was a member of Aizen's army or not would it matter during a fight?" With that being said, Gaara feigned a sudden hostile move in Zennosuke's direction and watched the Shinigami hightail it out of there.

Huh… he didn't even use Shunpo. Maybe he just couldn't? Then he definitely made the right decision in running away. He couldn't have stood up against Apacci, Mila Rose, or Sung-Sun anyway even if he had been the one to fight them.

Now that the Shinigami interloper was gone with urine possibly trailing down his leg, Gaara turned back around to find that one of his previous opponents had just come to, "Go home." He said simply before walking away.

Sung-Sun just looked at him as if he were insane, "You're willing to let us go?"

"Why would I still consider you a threat?" Gaara asked rhetorically as he stopped leaving to address her, "I defeated all three of you at your full power without even using my Resurrección. Even if doing so again would make any kind of difference, you don't have enough energy to do it and your friends are still unconscious." He then noticed a portal open up in the sky and pointed at it, "Your way home I presume? Take your partners and go."

Since she was the only one awake, Gaara's assumption that Sung-Sun had the strength to get herself, Apacci, and Mila Rose home was correct as he watched her stand up and gather the ladies over her shoulders.

Sparing the stoic redhead one last glance to make sure that he wasn't trying to bait her and attack her from behind later, Sung-Sun saw him just impassively staring with his arms crossed over his chest where his Hollow hole sat; waiting patiently for her to depart, "You know that it's not very smart to let us go like this."

Gaara's lips quirked almost unnoticeably in a bit of a smile as he responded, "If that's the case then I think my best friend's influence is rubbing off on me. He never was very smart either you see."

Sung-Sun spared a slight chuckle as she continued to eye Gaara for a while longer, "I believe I understand where you're coming from if you pay attention to the company I keep. Goodbye then." She said before quickly bolting into the sky out of view with the use of her Sonido.

Gaara just watched her go through the portal that had seemingly randomly been opened. Well at least he got a bit of a laugh out of one of the pretty Arrancar ladies… that had just tried to kill him. Oh, he didn't care. If he didn't have people trying to kill him he'd never have met anyone at all. But then he thought of something weird that he had overlooked until his enemies had departed.

Why was the Garganta opened right above Mother Base?

Without another thought he sped across town towards the Hollow portal to find out just what was going on at his new home.

XxX

(Moments Before – Mother Base – Rooftop)

Harribel simply waited for the newly reawakened adult Nelliel to respond to her, but she continued to look up at her with the same indecipherable look on her face. But she was a patient woman, and thus she was willing to wait for her predecessor's response, whatever that may be.

On the surface of the roof, Nel's eyes panned to Dondochakka and Pesche, and then to Jinta and Ururu. She then closed them and spoke to the calm Tres Espada hovering above, "I would like to thank you for at the very least not killing anyone here. Each of the people that fought you are my friends… so I can appreciate your mercy."

"I don't kill needlessly." Harribel said, "Your friends were in the way of my mission so I simply removed them, but killing them was never to be an intention of mine. If we merely kill at a whim then what makes us any different from the Hollows that we evolved from?" Nel nodded and Harribel drifted down to the ground as long as things were civil, "Aizen-sama wishes for your return to his army."

"I remember you saying that to my smaller self." With that being said, she looked down at the Zanpakutou that had materialized in its sheath that sat in her hand. She held it up and drew it enough to gaze at the steel of the blade shining in the moonlight before a sigh passed from her lips, "And I'll have to decline on that front. I'm not returning to Hueco Mundo to return to the Arrancar army."

Going native apparently was the theme of every Arrancar that the Espada seemed to run into these days. There was Hidan, Gaara, and now Nel. None of them were on Aizen's side after Nelliel's declaration to decline a return.

But Harribel just didn't get it. Why now? Nelliel had been perhaps the most reliable Arrancar in her time in the Espada, "Why would you stay here instead of return to Las Noches? You had always been trustworthy and respectful of Aizen-sama." He was the one that gave her the powers as an Arrancar that she enjoyed the use of.

"True enough, but only if that superior has shown that they are worthwhile to fight for." Nel gestured to the unconscious Dondochakka and Pesche, "What would make Aizen seem worthwhile now? We were attacked and gravely wounded by two of his elites under his command and not only did he never try to locate us, he never tried to find the reason for it or where we were. I won't sacrifice myself and my Fracción for a leader that won't stand up for such a grave injustice against his loyal subjects."

There was that word again; sacrifice.

And the fact of the matter was that Nelliel wasn't willing to stick her neck out for Aizen if he didn't even seem to care if she had been gone for several years prior to then.

From the feel of her Reiatsu, Nel was still more powerful than many of the current Espada, definitely more so than the bottom half, but she was deemed unimportant for that long when it wasn't a simple task of finding her once her energy signature was masked due to her injury.

Now that it was convenient and Aizen knew where she was, it was a simple matter to dispatch someone to retrieve her. So she was only worth searching for when it was convenient. Not really something that one would look towards when looking for endearing reasons to fight for someone.

"So you'll fight for them instead?" Harribel asked, no real expression on her mostly covered face other than raising one blonde eyebrow curiously.

At that point Nel just smiled serenely, "That's the thing. I don't think I'll have to fight at all if I were to remain here. In Hueco Mundo, in Las Noches as a part of Aizen's army I would be required to, but here I don't have to. Even if I remain like this, with my powers returned to me, if I chose not to fight I believe I'd be allowed to live peacefully."

"You believe that's an option for you? For someone of your power?"

"Of course it is. Have you not sensed the Reiatsu of your own enemies? Two Espada-class Arrancar, Two former Shinigami captains, a third Shinigami with incredible power and potential, and a regular human that has lived long enough that his power is ripened and potent enough to stand against the supernatural." Along with her analysis of all of the other powerful presences that her child form had been around since coming to the Human World, it was clear to her, "I'm not needed to fight by anyone here."

An Arrancar not fighting? Being allowed to be left alone? That was impossible. If Nel lingered in the Human World, even if Equilibrium would indeed leave her alone as she felt that they would, the Seireitei would sense her presence and would never let her just be.

Right?

But then, Hidan and Gaara were there too. They had to have been there for at least two months and they had remained off of the radar for the most part. So was it actually possible?

"I don't like being used. What kind of fool would I be if I went back to Aizen?" Nel said with a pitiful shake of her head before she set herself in a defensive stance, "So do you plan on killing me now that I've turned you down?"

Tensing up when she saw Harribel raise her sword, she calmed down when she saw the current Tres Espada simply place the weapon away in the sheath on her back, "If you're not going to fight on this side or the other I don't have any reason to consider you my enemy." A relieved Nel sheathed her sword as well before Harribel spoke again, "That may not be the case later, but for now I wasn't directed to do anything to you if you declined to come back with me."

She lifted her hand into the sky and flared up her Reiatsu before a Garganta opened up in the air. A quick use of Sonido placed her in the sky and a moment later she was joined by her Fracción, only one of whom actually happened to be conscious before they all left.

XxX

(With Naruto – Vicinity of Orihime's Apartment)

Impatience was clearly expressed on Naruto's face as he continued to watch Gin and Shinji's battle in the sky all around him, "I thought you said that you didn't want to fight anyone strong around here." He said to Gin once the man stopped to clash blades against Shinji's Zanpakutou. Shinji completely stole his opponent. What the hell? Gin showed up outside of _his_ employee's home and started throwing down against _him_. Since when was it cool to switch up dance partners like that?

"I didn't." Gin admitted to the sagely warrior as he struggled against Shinji, "But he does, and apparently that's all that matters right now."

Not feeling sorry for cutting into his friend's fight one bit, Shinji shoved Gin away and his Reiatsu quickly spiked as his pharaoh-looking Hollow mask formed on his face and the scelera of his eyes turned completely black, **"You're lucky that I can't blow you away without taking a chunk out of the town…"**

Gin's eyes opened a little bit in befuddlement before closing again in their usual expression, "Lucky me! Wonderweiss!" He then noticed that the intended place that Wonderweiss had planned on transporting himself to with Sonido already had Naruto there, and he had Wonderweiss wrapped in a bearhug, "Oh, you are just the worst kind of person."

"Are you kidding? I'm not taking my eyes off of this kid." Naruto said, holding on tightly to Wonderweiss in his Sage Mode state as the young Arrancar wriggled desperately to get free in vain, "The minute I do that he'll start shoving hands through people's backs and whatnot." He stopped ranting when he felt Wonderweiss tense up and wondered what was going on with the kid when he unleashed a horrible, deafening high-pitched wail.

Every pane of glass, even on the windshields of cars, shattered for miles and miles in every direction. Shinji's Hollow mask broke from the sheer noise that he was standing very close to. Even Naruto's grip involuntarily loosened on the childlike Arrancar due to the balance-crushing noise hitting him straight in the eardrums. He clutched his ears as Wonderweiss made his way back towards Gin while a rip appeared in the sky.

"**What the hell was that supposed to be?"** Shinji asked, still using his Hollow powers even though his mask had been broken.

"What?" Naruto yelled as he was unable to hear the Visored or aptly read his lips due to the ringing in his ears due to being at ground zero of Wonderweiss and his auditory attack.

Gin had Wonderweiss safely tucked under one arm as he waved at both Naruto and Shinji, "That was a fun little encounter, we'll have to do it again sometime. Hadou #32: Oukasen (Way of Destruction #32: Yellow Fire Flash)!"

Suddenly firing a wide, arcing horizontal blast of yellow energy from his Zanpakutou as a cover, he then made a break for the escape Garganta while Naruto and Shinji busied themselves with blocking the attack that pushed them both back, crashing into the roof below.

"Bye-bye now." Gin said as he pulled an extremely white cloth from within his own sleeve. It wrapped around Gin and Wonderweiss and coiled tightly before it all vanished from their sight along with Gin and his small and confused-looking charge well in hand.

Naruto stood up and dusted himself off, picking building debris out of his hair and mouth before cleaning his ear out, "What?" He yelled out again in a deaf manner as he hadn't really heard Gin's parting message. His hearing was starting to clear up though, "Man I hate fighting in the air." He commented to himself, "If we were on the ground where moving my legs actually mattered for speed that would have never hit me."

A grunt came from Shinji as he got himself out of some rubble himself, his Hollow powers faded away and his clothes messed up as well, "I'm used to fighting in weird situations really, especially with my Zanpakutou, so it never bothered me." What did bother him was that Aizen's little buddy from back in the day Gin stuck his nose back into Karakura Town, "What was he here for?"

"To see the sights apparently." Naruto said sarcastically as he located the Raijin no Ken he had disposed of tactically earlier to try and gain an advantage over Gin. He had allowed his Sage Mode and Rinnegan to drop since the battle was over and since Shinji was casual, thus there were no hostile signatures around.

Shinji just deadpanned a stare at his fellow blonde as he watched him pick his empty sword hilt up and safely pocket it, "…No really. What was he here for?" Naruto just shrugged in response, "Okay… next question on the pop quiz. Why didn't you use that weird inner power of yours to take on Gin?"

"Other than the fact that I didn't want to turn this part of town into a crater?"

"You're a crappy liar. You know better than to say that. You showed it to us to get us to trust you when we met and you used it before to beat down that one Espada and his dozens of followers, I remember. When I use the Hollow mask most of my abilities are Kidou-based, so I would have had to tear this place apart to win. Your excuse would be?"

Looking at Shinji's skeptical expression on his face, Naruto sighed as he walked his way back over, "My control over the Juubi isn't exactly what you would say safe and secure right now… If it's really on the verge of waking up, I don't want to risk it… especially in the middle of Karakura Town. Nobody would have a fighting chance of surviving it." If that happened he might as well allow Aizen to create the Ouken, because the Juubi's initial release would kill just as many people.

Not to mention how many more would die within mere days.

"Oh come on now." Shinji said, patting Naruto on the shoulder only to see the usual boisterous man not even crack a smile at the friendly gesture, "Really?" It wasn't a joke or an embellishment. This clearly wasn't any laughing matter as far as Naruto was concerned.

"Yeah, I'm telling you-." He then stopped as he felt something in his pocket where he put his sword hilt. He went wide eyed when he pulled from his possession a metal pendant with his clan symbol emblazoned upon it, "Oh hell, Orihime!" With great quickness, Naruto rushed towards her apartment and stood on the window corner of her bedroom that had been shattered by Wonderweiss's supersonic attack.

A sigh of relief came from him when he saw that she was still asleep as if a battle hadn't been fought in her neighborhood right outside of her doorstep. All of the glass from the busted windows in her room littered every inch of the floor, but not her bed. Lucky.

He really needed to try and get her and possibly Chad as well to move out of their apartments and into Mother Base. How was anyone supposed to watch out for them from a dozen miles away? At least Uryuu and Ichigo had the excuse that they had kickass parents when push came to shove, and Tatsuki lived right by Ichigo as well.

"These kids are going to be the death of me…" Naruto audibly complained to Shinji who seemed to be visibly disappointed that Orihime was slumbering fully clothed. What a way to kill a possible fantasy scenario.

The leader of the Visoreds watched dejectedly as Naruto checked Orihime over for any injuries or in case any surreptitious things had been done to her by an Arrancar agent on the sly while they had been fighting outside, "Damn it Naruto give me a break here… you couldn't have at least undressed her before you tucked her in? Help a guy out would you?" He then found himself kicked in the face off of the windowsill from Naruto.

XxX

(Mother Base)

Imagine Gaara's surprise when he returned to the base inside of his Gigai and found a full grown and very lovely woman with long green hair wearing a torn up gown that left very little to the imagination keeping watch over the injured but still very alive group of Jinta, Ururu, Pesche, and Dondochakka. She then noticed his presence and greeted him with a calm look and a nod of acknowledgment to go along with a small smile.

On a side note, he was so glad that Naruto woke him up out of that desert…

But then he took note of the skull mask on her head, and the blush looking mark on her face, and the scar going down her forehead. Those were things that were associated with Nel. And then he remembered what he knew about the girl losing her powers due to an injury received in the past.

So that was the real Nel?

Gaara simply approached her and waited alongside her in the room holding the injured for someone to return that could help them. He wished to speak to her, but he didn't really know what to say. Maybe, what made her take that appearance? Or maybe what the hell had happened to get the others so beaten up? Those would have made sense to ask, but at the time the former Kazekage was at a loss when it came to how he would approach asking her questions.

Perhaps he was just completely startled and shell-shocked at that woman actually being Nel; the little girl that had been running around the base and Urahara's shop for the past month.

Fortunately or unfortunately depending on whose perspective was taken into account, the option was taken out of his hands when all of a sudden Nel reverted to a child once more while the two of them were sitting and waiting. She simply popped back into a sleeping child as if she had been in a Henge or something. Just 'poof' and that was that.

Okay, what the hell just happened? That was a total mindfuck because once again now that she was a child Gaara could barely sense her, while before her presence had been exceedingly difficult to ignore or set aside at all. It was as if someone hit a light switch and the room went dark where before the entire place was illuminated by a single bulb.

What kind of injury did that to anyone?

Hidan strolled into the room at that moment, looking quite pleased and satisfied with himself and covered in a significant amount of blood, some of it his but most of it not. He noticed the injured people, then the sleeping Nel, and then he noticed the very subtle look of confusion and surprise on Gaara's face, "…What'd I miss?"

* * *

**Another year down in college, one more year left, and then life begins for real… which means my life will be over.**

**Aside from that I'm feeling fine. My hair looks great, I've still got 20/20 vision, and for once I'm injury-free. It's a good time to be Kenchi618.**

**Later folks. Life beckons once more. Until the next time, Kenchi out.**


	29. Optimistic View of a Pessimistic World

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. I found a way to get my soul out of my body… for like thirty seconds, but then I had to get resuscitated. It turns out I can't do it without dying.

That's kind of a problem for me.

**Chapter 29: Optimistic View of a Pessimistic World**

* * *

"Did anyone here _not_ get into a fight last night?" Naruto asked, wearing the slowly dissipating signs of battle on his face while Orihime healed his minor injuries from the run-in with Gin and Wonderweiss, "I mean it."

Sitting in temporary war-room of the Mother Base cafeteria, not only was there Naruto and Orihime, there was also Ichigo, Chad, Gaara, Hidan, Uryuu, Tatsuki, and a recently returned Yoruichi who was sitting at a table with her cheek in her hand, "I leave for one day to grab your present and all hell breaks loose. Can anyone tell me just what happened? Why launch an attack like that?"

"Other than trying to obtain Nel I don't know." Gaara said from his position leaning against the wall by the door. Either way, it wasn't heavy enough to be a real assault, "That was not a full-scale attack. It was meant to serve a particular purpose."

A snort came from Hidan who was busying himself with eating a meal while he listened, "You're telling me. They didn't send out the big guns to occupy us, they sent some pussy that called himself the Octava Espada. He didn't even push me to use my true power." The silver-haired sadist boasted.

Thinking of the fights from the previous night put thoughts of his own conflict in Ichigo's head, "They sent a really powerful guy to the Soul Society. He took on both me and Soi-Fon at the same time." That still didn't explain what the point of it all was, "All they did… all they did was kill people, a group of Shinigami, and destroy two towns. They couldn't have just done all of that for the hell of it. Aizen's a wicked bastard, but he can't be that depraved to let his people do something like that!"

"Don't bet against it." Naruto assured him, "Armies are always full of bloodthirsty, cruel fuckers." Yoruichi let out a cough that sounded suspiciously like '11th Division' that Naruto ignored, "And it just so happens that Aizen doesn't care, because in the end as long as he gets his Ouken thing to get to the Spirit King that's all that matters to him. He's going to kill 100,000 people to get it, do you think he cares if his goons go through a few hundred people just for kicks?"

Still there had to be a point behind it; a diversion of sorts to at least keep the Seireitei from reacting to what was happening in Karakura Town. But a diversion for what? That was the real problem. Going after Nel was one thing, but that seemed to be an approach of opportunity, not the main point of the attack.

"Someone say something smart already." Chad urged in his usual monotone voice from where he was sitting just randomly strumming notes out on his guitar, "How is everyone that got attacked here doing by the way?" The concerned Mexican teen asked.

Being the resident 'doctor' of the group, Orihime had seen to them first and foremost after she had woken up, "They were kind of beaten up, but mostly fine. They're fully healed now." She said cheerfully, "I need my windows fixed though."

Now that brought up something Naruto needed to take up with two people that worked for him, "About that sweetheart… I want you and Chad to start living here at the base." Chad plucked several wrong notes and Orihime stared at him with wide eyes, "…What? Is it really that weird of a request?"

"Yes." Everyone under the age of eighteen years old said simultaneously in response.

Okay, now that really got Naruto's goat. Damn kids, "Why?" He asked in an irritated fashion.

"Because you're kind of shady." Ichigo said, thinking of most of the interactions he had personally had with Naruto since day one. Who knew what strange things would happen to his two friends should they be left alone in his watch for extended periods of time, "You're really shady."

"I'm not nearly half as shady as Urahara and you let him do weird stuff to your soul after knowing him for like six hours Wonderboy!"

"Because you're a sadistic taskmaster jerk." Tatsuki chimed in second. After the outrageously dangerous things that he made her do to get stronger there was no way she was trusting him with someone as impressionable as Orihime… especially if Hidan was going to be there too.

"Duh, I'm training _you_." Naruto defended with a cynical look on his face, "I haven't even shoved you off of a cliff yet so I don't even want to hear that out of you. And I never put Orihime and Chad in any kind of danger so you're just making up excuses now."

Not to be left out in the cold, Uryuu wanted to get his observational shot in at their boss the way everyone else seemed to be doing, "You're basically a bounty hunter dispatch. You'd have to admit that after realizing such a thing it would be hard to fully trust you."

"But you all do anyway." Naruto replied, "And you all take my money when I give it to you, so I don't really see what your problem is you bunch of brats." Being a part-time protector of the living souls of the world didn't traditionally pay, "But last night I got into a fight with Ichimaru Gin and some creepy kid Arrancar right outside of Orihime's apartment. That's a problem."

A very valid point. If Orihime had been targeted, who would have been able to do anything to help her? Ichigo and Tatsuki lived at home, but Ichigo could take care of his damn self, and if not Isshin (who still hadn't let his son know he was a Shinigami) could do something about it. Uryuu had his father for a similar purpose just in case.

Chad and Orihime not only lived alone, they lived spread out quite a distance away. It wouldn't be a stretch at all to consider one of them being targeted in the near future. It was a doubt that Aizen saw them as any kind of threat, but if he ever did could anyone haul ass across town fast enough to get to one of them?

"If anyone can give me one good reason not to move them in I'm going ahead and doing it." Naruto said stubbornly with his arms crossed over his chest even as he sat down, "And if anyone has a problem with that there's an open battlefield in the basement and we've got a working medic right here that can fix anything, so bring it."

Hidan let out a barking laugh as the room was dead silent and no one raised a hand to dispute Naruto, either because they couldn't think of a reason or because they _really_ didn't want to go downstairs and fight over something so trivial… since most of the teens were sure they'd have no chance in hell of winning, save for perhaps maybe Ichigo.

With that settled, Naruto stood up and held out a hand for Yoruichi to take as she got up as well, "You see? That's how you handle dissention in the ranks; you challenge everyone that works for you to a deathmatch." He said as he placed an arm around her waist and walked out with her.

"Yeah." Yoruichi said sarcastically as they left the cafeteria in tandem, "That's a great way to promote company synergy. Can we deal with the whole Nel thing now?"

XxX

(Hueco Mundo – Las Noches)

With his usual permanently etched grin on his face, Gin stood amongst Grimmjow and Harribel; the Espada that all had been dispatched on their missions to the human world and to the Soul Society the previous evening. The only ones absent were Yammy and Luppi. Yammy was busy getting his severed arm healed, and Luppi of course wasn't there because he was dead.

You can't really show up for meetings when you're dead. In theory you could, but you would be more of a distraction and a hindrance than anything else. Him being dead was all the report that he needed to give anyway.

Either way, they stood in front of Aizen who was sitting casually on a throne with Tousen standing near him vigilantly. Gin stepped forward first, fitting for his position as one of Aizen's top men, "The mission failed as I'm sure you know. I wasn't able to get an iota of the power he used to flatten Szayel Apporo out of him. I gave him openings and excuses to go further but he never did."

"I understand that you did all that you could." Aizen said in regards to his second-in-command, "The only thing that could have done so if that were the case would have been your Bankai, and Karakura Town would have been damaged heavily in the course of that battle."

The mission hadn't been solely to get to Nelliel and return her to the ranks of the Espada. That had merely been an objective of opportunity that couldn't be missed out on. The mission was meant for the purpose of determining just what the power that lay inside of Uzumaki Naruto was. It had only been felt for an instant when he killed the previous Octava Espada, but from what Tousen's powerful senses felt, it was something that couldn't be overlooked or ignored.

Aizen was aware of the powers of every single captain of the Seireitei, and he had planned accordingly for them all. But this strange man had thrown something of a monkey wrench into things. He had coordinated a separate group intent on protecting Karakura Town, and had brought in two wild cards of extra mystery. While the majority of his little ragtag group were people that Aizen had prepared for already and people that served no real consequence to his plans, he had Kurosaki Ichigo amongst them and apparently had a rapport with the outcast Visored group.

These problems were all something that he could adjust for, but not the man himself. He made the smashing of an Espada and his entire Fracción look easy. Easier than it should have been. Szayel Aporro Grantz wasn't much for direct combat outside of Las Noches, but his abilities and intellect were problematic enough to give any Shinigami or Arrancar fits. And he had no qualms about retreating either, which meant that Naruto defeated him so quickly in such a quick flash of power that it hadn't been an option that went through his head before the end came.

"That man is a catalyst of anarchy…" Tousen commented, holding his hand on the hilt of his Zanpakutou to alleviate some of the dislike that he held for the blonde man. He was throwing everything off, "A curse that appears through the ages of modern human history."

"Well I kind of liked him." Gin remarked with a hand stroking his chin, "He seemed like a good kind of guy to have a conversation with… if I wasn't trying to poke around with his powers and find out what makes him tick and everything. You know how it is."

"Quite." Aizen responded in turn, "Well be that as it may, I need a plan of action to take in order to neutralize our newest friend so that things can go off as planned. Until then though; Grimmjow, what of your mission?"

Grimmjow just scoffed once it was deemed his turn to speak, "The Shinigami response time was what you expected it to be after they knew about us as a threat, but they only sent the small-fry out first… pathetic. Then you know what happened when the big-timers showed up. I fought the chick while my Fracción got cut to pieces by the substitute and the human. Yammy fought the chick's subordinate until the substitute stepped in and lopped his arm off."

He seemed to not care about the meeting, and truthfully he didn't, but he had been interested in the power he sensed from Ichigo after Ichigo blocked his final attack. He felt the presence of a Hollow within a Shinigami, a strong one. And that interested him greatly, because Ichigo hadn't been overwhelmed or critically injured at all. Something about that didn't sit well with him at all.

It didn't really matter about anything else to Grimmjow. He fired that blast at Soi-Fon and Ichigo as a show that he was to be considered the king, the strongest, that he could maim or kill a captain without releasing his Zanpakutou, but then that orange-haired kid blocked it.

And that pissed him off.

"What of Nelliel?" Harribel asked, remembering her own portion of the mission that she had been sent to Karakura Town for. A full-scale battle would have been the only way to procure her, and such a thing would have gotten out of hand far too quickly for it to be an effective method of obtaining someone so strong.

"Yes, it's a shame that she refused to return." Tousen said. He had actually liked Nelliel and her philosophy on fighting and battle in general. It was refreshing for him to know of a creature derived from a Hollow that felt that way.

Aizen just let out a sigh that sounded more bored than anything else, "Well, I can't let deserters from the Arrancar Army roam free to do as they please. If she refuses to return, make a note that she is marked for extermination. Even though her information on our ambition is outdated, it is still something that can be used by our enemy. She is to be killed at the soonest opportunity."

"I can't understand what made her think that way." Harribel said. She had held much respect for her predecessor as the Tres Espada, and she still did. But she had been an ardent supporter of Aizen's forces until her disappearance. It couldn't simply be the treachery of that brute Nnoitra and the sexist fool Szayel Aporro, she seemed to be a bigger person than that.

Perhaps it was the injury to her head that was evident from her scar and the crack in her mask. Perhaps it was the time that she spent amongst the Equilibrium group… notably Uzumaki Naruto, who seemed to be the strangest person she had ever met.

Who really knew?

Maybe she really was sick of fighting and saw her current position as the best way to avoid doing it. She was surrounded by people of varying levels of strength, so it wasn't as if it was necessary for her to fight. And fight for what exactly?

"That may be." Aizen said, still with his usual calm air about him no matter what the circumstance, "But whatever her reasoning is, it is inconsequential. If she is no longer with us she is against us, because we cannot risk considering her insignificant."

So Nelliel was marked for eradication at the nearest opportunity. Nnoitra would love that bit of news more than likely.

XxX

(Human World – Karakura Town – Mother Base)

Little Nel sat on a high stool, surrounded by Naruto, Yoruichi, Urahara, and even Orihime who was standing off to the side away from the other three a bit. She seemed a touch confused at what was going on, "Can Nel go now? Nel wants to go see Dondochakka and Pesche."

"Does she even remember it?" Naruto asked first, breaking the awkward silence amongst them, "She doesn't seem like she even knows what we think is supposed to be weird about what she did."

"Eloquent." Yoruichi jibed, getting Naruto to stick his tongue out at her, "And I wouldn't know, I wasn't here remember? The only one that even felt the Reiatsu and saw grown-up Nel was Gaara." And why wasn't he here for this? It only stood to reason that as the sole witness he needed to be there. But Gaara was asleep… which seemed to be his favorite thing to do other than landscaping, "So we'll just have to take his word for it that he wasn't hallucinating."

Urahara stroked his shaggy chin in thought, "Well it makes sense with what I've found." He said, touching Nel on the head at the crack on her mask, "You see that? I scanned her body and an absurd amount of energy is leaking out of that crack. Enough to shrink her body apparently, but she seems to produce so much that it doesn't do anything else detrimental to her health. So in theory if you fix the crack you should fix her."

Fix the crack? How long had that damn thing been there? At that point it was a permanent injury wasn't it? So the reasoning wasn't sound, "You can fix that? It's such an old wound though. It's probably just a scar or something by now, right?"

Seemingly pleased at Naruto's skepticism, Urahara launched into gratuitous explanation mode, complete with Tessai producing a board that showed crude pictures of what he was talking about, "Ah, but that's the thing. The use of medical Kidou can't repair such a thing. While that particular use of Reiryoku can do many things such as repair limbs that are completely lost in battle or restore organs it cannot do things when the body has been conditioned to its current circumstances."

Both Naruto and Orihime just stared at Urahara blankly throughout the entirety of the monologue, "What?"

Talk about chakra and Naruto would understand. He could give (and had given Tatsuki on several different occasions) four hour long lectures on exactly how to mould chakra in different ways and the applications that it could be used for. But this was different. He didn't use the same energy that the Shinigami did, and all he knew about it was what he had to learn because it was being hurled at him in fights against various folks of spiritual descent.

Orihime on the other hand… well, there wasn't really much that could be said for her. She just didn't have a need to know the intricacies of these things since her own powers were pretty straightforward.

Urahara rapped Naruto on the top of the head chidingly with his fan and Orihime as well as if they were bad students. Naruto wanted to choke him to death by shoving his hat down his throat. He was a grown-ass man, not some kid, "Pay attention now because Urahara Kisuke does not repeat himself."

"What?"

"I said Urahara Kisuke does not-." He stopped talking when he saw the huge grin on Naruto's face. Both had said it, but only Orihime had really meant it, "Whatever… anyway, moving on now. While medical Kidou is not an option for this, we don't use medical Kidou. Or should I say, _Orihime_ doesn't use medical Kidou. Her powers merely reject the reality within the barrier she enacts." Tessai flipped the board to the other side that had diagrams of Orihime's powers.

Orihime's shield rejected negative events; things that could deal injury and harm to others and to herself.

Orihime's offensive attack rejected the fusion of matter and split it by touching it.

Orihime's healing technique rejected and reversed things to the way they had been before being damaged or destroyed. Theoretically she could do this with _anything_. Not just wounds.

By now Naruto was seated on the floor with Orihime sitting next to him and soaking the whole lesson up as if she were in school and he was back in the Ninja Academy… only he was really paying attention because it was vital to a little girl(?) for him to know. And also because it was the most gimme power he had ever seen anyone have.

A kunai was spinning by its ring on Naruto's finger as he sat and listened with cat-Yoruichi in his lap, her clothes folded neatly right next to him, "So basically you're telling me, that instead of replacing stuff that's gone from fresh injuries with Reiryoku, something that chakra can't do and something that can't be done if the wound heals naturally, she can just take that and go back in time and make it so that it never happened at all."

Urahara's fan snapped open, conveying that he was satisfied with his crash course on Orihime's abilities being understood fully, "Exactly. You said it in the most ass way possible but you've got it. Thoughts?"

Naruto just turned his head toward Orihime robotically with an unreadable expression on his face, "You do realize that for someone that doesn't want to fight, you've got the best powers out of everybody else, right?" If she had the intent to fight and kill her enemies her offensive attack would be able to cut through anything, and if she trained it hard enough her shield would be able to stop a captain's best Bankai attack directly. It had that kind of potential.

The black cat version of Yoruichi hopped out of Naruto's lap and faced Orihime, "So you can heal the wound to Nel's mask where even the best medics in the Seireitei cannot. The fact that you managed to heal the damage done to Uryuu after the use of his technique in the Seireitei proves this much. How about it?"

"Of course I'll help!" Orihime quickly exclaimed. She got up off of the floor and she placed a hand on the top of Nel's head, giving the little Arrancar a reassuring smile, "I'm going to go ahead and fix the crack in your mask okay? Is that alright with you?"

Nel put her hands on top of her head where Orihime's hand had just been and she looked up as if she could see her cracked skull mask, which she couldn't, "…Uh huh. That's okay with Nel."

Clapping her hands once happily, Orihime immediately endeavored to get to work and fix her as quickly as she could, "Souten Kisshun (Twin Sacred Returning Seal), I reject!" A barrier surrounded Nel's body as the scar on her face slowly started to vanish, much to Orihime's delight. Unlike with what she had done for Uryuu, she could actually see the progress she was making, "I don't know how long this is going to take though."

"Not long." Yoruichi said, entranced by how quickly the scar was healing until it no longer existed, "…Orihime how are you doing this so quickly?" This was in theory a very serious and very old injury.

Orihime didn't know how to answer that question. Though in all honesty she'd been noticing just how fast her healing technique was getting when she'd fix up Tatsuki during the more rather brutal training exercises she would undergo. And also when she repaired Hidan's body. She noticed that she could regenerate his limbs faster than she could when she had gone to the Soul Society and healed Jidanbou's arm. Where that had taken hours from afternoon until nightfall, fixing Hidan took an hour.

That had to mean she was getting stronger with her ability to heal.

It took a minute or so longer, but the crack in Nel's mask started vanishing before everyone's eyes.

XxX

(Meanwhile – Ichigo's House)

After spending more than enough time at Mother Base for the afternoon, Ichigo decided to head home. He still had a life as a teenager to live and a family.

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK

After the knocks came on the door of his house, Ichigo was of course the first person downstairs to open it. Much to his surprise, Tatsuki walked right in, kicking her shoes off at the door, "Uh, okay. Come on in then." He said as Tatsuki seemed to ignore him altogether, "Do you want something?"

She vanished behind a corner before motioning back for him to follow her. With a sigh heaved, Ichigo simply lumbered along and followed Tatsuki to the clinic portion of the Kurosaki home, "Where are Yuzu and Karin?"

"Yuzu's upstairs and Karin is still out playing soccer with her friends." Ichigo said confusedly, "Why?"

Tatsuki didn't say anything, but this answer seemed to satisfy her enough to reach into her schoolbag and pull out a fingerless red glove with a flaming skull insignia on it. Ichigo flinched in phantom pain of remembering having that damn thing slammed off of his face again and again by Rukia back when he had first started out as a Shinigami.

Before he could comment on it, they came across Ichigo's father Isshin who was seemingly doing inventory on his current medical supplies. Of course when he saw Tatsuki he put the clipboard down and addressed her with a smile, "Ah, Tatsuki. You haven't been over here in a while. Did Ichigo piss you off or something?"

"Or something." Tatsuki said with a smile on her face that promised nothing good as she held her hands behind her back. With absurd speed, she dashed forward and struck Isshin right in the stomach with a punch from her gloved hand that made his body go limp as it no longer had a soul in it.

To Ichigo's complete surprise, the soul that flew out of his father's body didn't have a chain attached to his chest. In fact, his soul was wearing garb that was quite familiar to Ichigo, "Dad? Wh-What? A Shinigami?"

Isshin cursed to himself. He should have known better. Even though he was a fast human, Tatsuki was ridiculously fast, freakily so. From their conversation the previous night it was clear that Uzumaki Naruto was the man to thank for that, "Any reason you decided to do that?"

"Because last night when I yelled at you, you said you'd tell Ichigo." Tatsuki said, pulling off the borrowed glove and placing it back amongst her things to return to the Urahara Shop later, "I know how you old people are with things like this. You'll just let it sit until it's really inconvenient and you don't have any other choice. Well now you can't."

She was pissed off that her friend's dad was a supernatural warrior for years and she didn't know about any of it. Tatsuki could only imagine how Ichigo felt about it, because it was his father they were talking about.

And she didn't have to imagine for much longer, because with his Substitute Shinigami badge in hand, Ichigo pressed it to his chest and allowed his Shinigami form to come out, and he looked none too pleased at being more or less hoodwinked by his father for his entire life, "We need to have a talk old man." Ichigo said with barely veiled annoyance.

He knew that his father had his reasons, and he didn't want an explanation for why he kept it from him when he knew even when he was a kid that Ichigo could see ghosts. Still, that didn't mean he couldn't try and kick him around to vent… because while Isshin had his reasons to hide it and Ichigo understood that, he had his own reasons to be upset and he was going to exhibit that in return.

"Okay." Isshin said, knowing that Ichigo's idea of talk involved him trying to beat eight different shades of shit out of him, "Outside?"

Ichigo opened the door outside and Isshin put the clinic phone in Tatsuki's hand in case someone called something in while he was dealing with his son.

XxX

On her way home from playing soccer with her friends, Karin stopped where she was walking on the sidewalk because in midair she could see both her brother and her father wearing those strange black robes and slamming swords against each other, shouting loudly all the while.

'Just keep on walking girl.' Karin said to herself as she did just that, trying her best to shut it out of her mind, 'You don't see ghosts, your brother doesn't kill evil ghosts with a giant sword, and you're just having a waking hallucination. It's alright. Just an overactive imagination.'

It was hard to keep trying to act like you didn't see anything when the things that you saw kept getting stranger and stranger all the time.

XxX

(Mother Base – Security/Communications Room)

"_You plan on heading back into Hueco Mundo again on another reconnaissance mission?"_ On a screen in the communications room of the base was leader of the Seireitei's Gotei 13, Yamamoto Genryuusai Shigekuni, _"This is ill-advised."_

In the room as well stood Naruto who had asked for the link to be made with the Soul Society, and Urahara who had been showing Naruto how the whole thing worked since he had been the one to install all of the high-tech things in the base to begin with.

"Understood." Naruto said, wearing casual clothes with the silver clan symbol pendant Orihime had gifted him with yesterday on a thick brown cord around his neck prominently, "But you've got to understand that… well, you aren't anyone's commander here." He didn't know how to say it in a way that wouldn't sound offensive, but it was true, "You hired us for some things and we did those things, but we're not a part of the Seireitei."

The 1st Division's Lieutenant, the refined-looking white-haired man Sasakibe Choujirou seemed to take offense to this and visibly bristled as a result of Naruto's words, _"How can you show such disrespect to the captain commander?"_

At this point Urahara interjected before Naruto chose to mouth off to Yamamoto's second-in-command as he seemed to be gearing up to do, "It's not a matter of disrespect. You exiled Tessai, Yoruichi, and myself. As long as what we do doesn't harm the Seireitei you really don't have any business with our business. Our business isn't your business, so it's none of your business if we decide to go to Hueco Mundo to do business."

Naruto nodded in firm agreement before turning to Urahara and giving him a dry look, "What the hell did you just say?"

Urahara just ignored Naruto and pulled out his fan that he held in front of his face, "And by 'we' I mean Uzumaki-san and whomever he can rope into going with him, because I will not be going to that deserty mess of a place. I'm a man of science, not a battle-hungry brute. No offense." He added in the end for Naruto's benefit.

"Offense taken." Naruto returned with an affronted look on his face, "Offense very much taken Urahara. I'm telling Yoruichi that you called me a battle-hungry brute." That wasn't him, that was Hidan, "I let you beta-read my new novels and this is how it is? I thought we were cool."

A clearing of Yamamoto's stern voice returned attention back to him. He still had seniority over Naruto in regards to years of life, and by virtue of such Naruto put his thing with Urahara off to the wayside for the time being. There was still a quite serious matter at hand, _"I cannot commit any Shinigami toward a large-scale offensive endeavor. Two districts were completely destroyed, thousands of Rukongai denizens were lost, and fifty of our people that were sent out prior to Soi-Fon-taichou and Marechiyo-fukutaichou were killed."_

Both Naruto and Urahara looked at each other before Naruto decided to make his point, "Well I'm not going to just sit here and wait. Aizen's got his Arrancar Army taking shots at us whenever they want. It's a matter of time before they pull something bigger than that." He conveniently left out the part where they tried to kidnap his little Arrancar dependant Nel, but that probably wouldn't have gone over well at all.

"_So you would venture into the wasteland of the Hollows of your own free will? You would be better advised to wait in Karakura Town where in a way you have the advantage of the battlefield. A large-scale battle will never happen there as Aizen needs the souls of the city for the Ouken. He cannot risk sacrificing too many human lives beforehand."_

Sitting back and waiting for someone to come and do as they will never sat well with Naruto. Whatever happened next in Karakura Town they would just have to react to it the way they always did. That was no position to take. If nothing else, going back into Hueco Mundo might dig up some way to bring the battle to the enemy appropriately.

And what if the next time the Espada and their Fracción approached was the time that Aizen would finally decide to take them out and form his key to reach the Spirit King? Would the Seireitei be able to dispatch help quickly enough for them to help take on a whole army, or would it just be Equilibrium?

No, that wasn't a chance that he was willing to take. He'd scope out an opportunity to attack, because when he and his sat and waited for the more aggressive enemy terrible things always happened when they finally came forward.

The loss of life in the Human World might have only been as important to the Sereitei as more work generated by an influx of souls, but Naruto wasn't going to let it happen in a manner like this, "No. The enemy is there, and I'm going to attack him there."

He'd been hit twice already at his own base, and he'd already shown Aizen that the fact that he had taken refuge in Hueco Mundo meant absolutely nothing to him. He could move between the realms just like any Hollow or Arrancar because he had two of them in his direct employ and he had the Gedou, though he didn't want to end up back in the Menos Forest.

"…We just have to figure out how to do it first."

Hence the second scouting mission into Hueco Mundo. If Aizen could do it whenever he felt like it in Karakura Town why couldn't they?

"_Hmm…"_ Yamamoto seemed to be scrutinizing the human man carefully. It wasn't an advised practice sending Shinigami of the Gotei 13 into Hueco Mundo; one would have to be powerful to go into that mess and be ensured to survive, and only high-ranking seated officers if not outright lieutenants and captains could be trusted to do so. At a time like this that couldn't be a resource that could be spent, _"I trust that whatever findings you unveil you will take to us."_

"Sure thing Yamamoto-sotaichou." Urahara said seriously.

Naruto then cut in, "-For an exorbitantly large amount of money." He said, getting glared at by Lieutenant Sasakibe over the screen again, "What? You just said that you aren't putting in on this with any kind of sanctioned manpower, so why would I just give you a service like this for free?" It was his ass and the asses of his people on the line here, "Maybe one day UNICEF will get into the business of spirits, but until then we're the people to see if you're not doing it yourself."

Yamamoto let out something of an old man snort, but then again that was what you could count on when you dealt with mercenaries, _"You don't seem to care about the justice side of the situation."_

"I care about justice just fine." Naruto said, crossing his arms and drumming his fingers on his biceps a bit impatiently, "It's just that your justice isn't my justice."

At that point, Urahara just turned and stared at Naruto blankly, "…What?" He felt a small measure of revenge when Naruto palmed his forehead at not being understood by the former Shinigami captain.

"_If that is the way that things are to be-."_ Yamamoto started to say, his hands perched on top of his great cane as he sat in front of the camera broadcasting their discussion, _"-Then I request your presence in the Seireitei once more to discuss the terms of payment."_

A nod came from Naruto as that sounded good enough for him, "I'll start the trip there within two hours."

"_We'll be anticipating your arrival."_ With that, the transmission ended and the large communication screen went blank.

Naruto frowned at the screen before he and Urahara started walking out of the room, "I get the feeling that the old man doesn't like me that much." He couldn't really blame him that much. For all intents and purposes, Yamamoto was the most prominent figure in the Soul Society, which automatically put him above any figurehead in the Human World by virtue of the scope of his responsibilities.

"Most people don't seem to do they?" Urahara pointed out after considering Naruto's interactions with others, "Did you ever think of maybe developing a more personable demeanor? You might make more friends in high places that way."

'Like you come off as any better than me.' Naruto thought with a roll of his eyes, "I'm a nice guy. I'm just old enough that I stopped caring what most people that aren't my friends think of me. Who cares? They're gonna die before me anyway."

"That might be okay for humans, but it doesn't work like that with Shinigami you know."

"I'll keep that in mind. How old is Yamamoto anyway?"

"Who knows? I'm scared to ask honestly."

XxX

(Soul Society – Seireitei – 1st Division HQ)

As the feed between the Seireitei and Naruto cut off, Yamamoto moved back to his desk to continue overseeing his day-to-day duties as the head of the Gotei 13. As he did this, Sasakibe remained where he stood, keeping his appearance as poised as possible, "Yamamoto-sotaichou, if I may speak freely."

"Of course you may." The grizzled and ancient Shinigami said as he nonchalantly began reading through reports sent his way from captains in other divisions, "Go ahead."

"Why do we tolerate that man operating of his own accord in the Human World?" Sasakibe asked, bringing up his displeasure with Naruto. He was aware as was Yamamoto that there were many high-ranking Shinigami that rather liked him, but he didn't count himself as one of them, "A Substitute Shinigami is one thing, but do we really need him?"

Yamamoto's eyes slowly peered up at his lieutenant and he took his time before speaking, "Need him? No. But keep in mind this; Aizen Sousuke is not just a former captain of our Gotei 13, he also has two fellow former captains conspiring against us with him. Not only does he have an intimate knowledge of the Seireitei, he has incredible knowledge of the specialties and the released forms of all of our seated officers' Zanpakutou."

And he didn't know anything about Naruto in return. He knew a bit about Ichigo, Uryuu, and basically all of the Ryoka that had attacked the Seireitei to free Rukia, but not nearly to the extent that he knew the Gotei 13. Therein lay the chance element to obtain an advantage over Aizen.

"We do not know much about our 'allies.'" Yamamoto said calmly, "But in return Aizen does not either. While they may present themselves as a problem later, for now they are fine… and the enemy of my enemy of course… is possibly my ally." Especially when the true enemy had the ability to possibly destroy and change all.

XxX

(Hours Later – Seireitei)

The gate guard that Naruto was on the best terms with; Jidanbou waved once to him as the massive Shinigami let the gate fall behind him once more. It was late in the afternoon with the beginning to set, and Naruto was intending to adhere to business, get a quick rest, and head into Hueco Mundo the next morning to meet up with the team that intended to go with him on the exploration of the wasteland.

"Alright." Naruto said, looking over the very beautiful and traditional looking streets and walls of the Soul Society capital, "Your first time here. What do you think?"

At his side, Tatsuki just shivered slightly, still a bit freaked out from their trip, "I don't want to take the way back that you used. Not through Hueco Mundo again."

Naruto had used the Gedou and dropped them in the Menos Forest before waiting to relocate his intended destination prior to doing it again and linking them to the Soul Society. Tatsuki of course almost wound up traumatized when they were surrounded by Menos. He needed to remember to reset his default entry point into that realm to the comparatively safer desert portion of the Hollow world. It was already set in the Soul Society to the Rukongai district closest to Jidanbou's gate.

"Oh come on, it wasn't that bad was it?" Naruto asked her, getting a glare back from his student, "Well too bad. You're still going back with me. I can't let you go back on your own. My cute little apprentice is too valuable to be left wandering the Senkaimon by herself. Who knows what'll happen?"

Tatsuki let out a huff but kept quiet as they walked through the Seireitei. It wasn't like she wouldn't have a Shingami escort to show her the way through. What she wasn't paying attention to though was the fact that if that were the case she would be better off watching over herself. She was stronger than an unseated Shinigami.

That usually didn't become obvious when her sparring came again her absurdly strong partners in Ichigo, Naruto, Hidan, Yoruichi… basically anyone she got to work with her. But to those that knew what to look for it was.

She could fight on par with Chad if she could avoid his strength, and all she needed to go up against Uryuu was more speed.

Naruto repeatedly referenced her scary growth rate. There had to be something in the water, or maybe in the Reiatsu she was constantly surrounded with. That was a contributing factor in the development of her strong chakra to begin with, so logic would dictate that being closer to a much more varied amount of strong power would only boost it further.

There had to be something behind that. Her capacity for growth was just too large. Maybe making humanity go cold turkey on the chakra portion of the ninja arts for more than a millennia gave her improvement a boost? Sort of like planting a crop in new soil or something.

When he said that she was valuable, Tatsuki had no idea how much truth there was in that statement from Naruto's perspective.

'The day I let you cut loose…' Naruto thought to himself before shaking his head in amusement, 'You are going to be terrifying.' But not right now, because first and foremost she didn't know how good she actually was, and that was by design. Second of all while she was strong she wasn't strong enough to deal with an Espada. Not even close. And that was the real concern, "Just be cool. You'll be with me, and I won't let anything happen to you."

"Don't tell me to be cool sensei." Tatsuki grumbled before shooting a glance over at Naruto and smiling a bit when she saw that he was wearing the pendant she and Orihime had gotten for him for his birthday, "So you're going to have a boring meeting with the guy in charge of the Shinigami?"

"Nope." Naruto quickly answered, "We don't like each other, so he made it so that I have to go to another one of the captains to hash out the details." Someone impartial, someone that would probably do their best to keep a level head in Naruto's presence, and someone that he probably wouldn't get along with exceedingly well also.

That left out Soi-Fon due to the fact that he'd keep playing with her until she tried to kill him because he liked that, Unohana because he liked her and she seemed to be pleasant enough to enjoy his company and he wouldn't feel the strain to be professional, Shunsui because they'd just drink for the whole meeting, Ukitake because they'd be too calm and casual to work an actual meeting, Kenpachi because you didn't use the 11th Division for anything more complicated than 'go there and fight that' (he'd just try to kill him… again), Kurotsuchi because he wasn't one for meetings and he'd keep trying to get Naruto to allow him to experiment live on him,

That really only left two captains that would possibly be able to meet with him. It was a good thing Naruto already knew which division headquarters he had been directed to.

XxX

(Hueco Mundo – Las Noches)

In a room with a series of large screens, the blind Tousen sat there as different angles of his earlier battle with Yoruichi played on the screen. It was the last thing that Szayel Apporo contributed to the Espada Army before his untimely demise.

As he sat there, Gin walked in with his normal grin present on his face. He stood behind his fellow Gotei 13 defector and watched the fight going on on-screen. He of course had already seen it multiple times for fun.

"Y'know, I don't know why you're playing this." Gin commented, "It's not like you can watch it and learn something from it. Unless you want me to tell you what happens? Because if you do it's at the part where she blew apart a whole building to try and kill you."

And right on cue the part where Yoruichi fired Tousen into the side of an old factory with a Kidou that she followed up with another even stronger attack that blew it to pieces. Gin wondered how Tousen was able to avoid the brunt of that damage, but it didn't matter at that point.

"Do you have a reason for being here Gin?" Tousen asked, turning around in his chair to look in Gin's direction with his blindfolded eyes, "Something that you need perhaps? Or maybe you want to watch your own battle with Uzumaki in order to learn how to force him to draw upon his power to complete your mission to learn about it for Aizen-sama's benefit."

"Nah." Gin said with a casual shrug as if it didn't matter to him, "A guy like that… I'll have plenty of chances to check out whatever weird stuff he's got going for him. It's too bad though." A click of a few buttons and the screen shifted to Naruto's battle with Szayel Aporro. All that was seen was the pink-haired Arrancar terrorizing Nel in a child form and then Naruto kicking him off of the roof.

They faced off from adjacent positions before black flame-like energy began emanating from Naruto's body. From there the feed of whatever Szayel Aporro had cooked up to observe the coming battle flickered out and left nothing. A rather auspicious debut for his final invention used in the field, but too bad it couldn't last just a bit longer when it would have been most important.

What kind of human was he? While his presence was inconsequential in the culmination of Aizen's plot, that didn't mean that it was something that could be put to the wayside. That much was already obvious. From his actions and the refuge taken in the most hostile of environments for a Shinigami, Aizen had placed the Gotei 13 in a neutralized position, so at this point the most important action he could take until the time was right for the final move on Karakura Town was to fortify what they already had.

Until Aizen gained satisfactory mastery over the Hougyoku he wasn't going to wage an attack. But once he obtained it there wasn't going to be anything that could keep him away from pushing the issue.

"I can see why studying such a thing is necessary." Tousen said figuratively. Any set of powers and/or natural abilities that would enable a human, no matter how skilled of a warrior they were, to fight on par against or beyond Hollows and Shinigami had a right to be examined. Just like the entire contingent of Ryoka that invaded the Soul Society, "But in a case such as this I believe it would be best to simply destroy him and leave it at that."

Gin made a sharp inhalation noise through his teeth, "So brutal, especially coming from you, but yeah I see your point. Still, I've got my orders and I've got to get the low-down on that black power of his. I guess I could kill him, but we don't have a scientist anymore to study his corpse if I did, so seeing it will have to do."

Tousen Kaname was not one for killing trivially, but he had a terrible feeling about Uzumaki Naruto. It was a different kind of ill feeling than one that more than a few held for Kurosaki Ichigo, and different than the threat he felt was directly posed by the most powerful of the Gotei 13, "That man is hiding something catastrophic. Whether it be for Aizen-sama's plans alone or for more than that I'm not sure. But it would serve you well to look at this with a wider scope."

"Funny." Remarked Gin before his grin dropped a bit, "Oh, you weren't making a joke. Sorry." Figuring that he had better leave before he somehow offended Tousen for being blind even more, Gin left the room and decided to let Tousen get back to his previous activity, "Well you don't have to worry about me not keeping the grander scheme in mind. Trust me, I'm definitely anticipating as far ahead as possible."

Accepting that as the equivalent of Gin acknowledging his warning and being prepared for it, Tousen turned back toward the screen and started the footage of his battle with Yoruichi back up. And while he could hear it he still couldn't see it.

It always came back to that point, 'Perhaps… perhaps the time has finally come for Aizen-sama to gift me with the power that he offered me? The power that will grant me my sight.'

XxX

(Soul Society – Seireitei – 10th Division HQ)

A moment of quiet and tranquility left an opening for Tatsuki to get in a touch of training while the moment was available. Nothing physical of course. She was there with her sensei on something of business and couldn't really just go around and request spars with the copious amounts of Shinigami that lived and worked there.

It was a bit of a waste really. It seemed like the only Shinigami that she knew close enough to know their names were the really strong ones, but when they had been going around the premises on the way to the captain's office she saw more than a few of them sparring with their swords. From what she saw she could beat them. They weren't that fast since they barely had the concept of Shunpo down, and if she was brave enough to face down Ichigo swinging his freakishly large butcher knife of a sword she could deal with a regular katana.

"Do you mind?" Tatsuki asked as she sat on a couch in a rather cluttered portion of the captain's office. Forms and various papers were all over the place in that section, "I'm trying to train a bit here." Her hands were working through hand-seals trying to lower the time it took her to activate her ninjutsu, especially her current strongest one that took more than twenty seals to do.

Sitting next to her on the couch, observing her almost disturbingly close was Rangiku, staring at her rapidly moving hands curiously, "…So you moved up from popping balloons and now you're training for… finger puppetry? I don't know what you're doing now." Instead of getting flustered at the bubbly lieutenant's remark, Tatsuki pulled out one of her trench knives and channeled her fire chakra into it for Hien which caught the weapon's blades and the toothy point of it on fire, "Oh! Hey that's pretty good."

It really was. For Rangiku it was strange to think of that girl that had only been able to battle with those trench knives and superhuman physical abilities a month ago. Now she could control fire and who knew what else? It wasn't like Naruto had to control the strength of the techniques that she was learning. Tatsuki was a disciplined martial artist long before Naruto ever got his hooks into her.

A satisfied Tatsuki smirked and nodded at Rangiku's acknowledgment of her growth and went back to working on her hand-seals, "Why's this office so messy?" She asked offhandedly.

"I haven't gotten around to doing my work yet." Rangiku said as she lazily sprawled out on her back on the chair, showing no shame as much of her sizeable chest hung out, "Don't worry though. If I wait long enough I can find a way to get Hitsugaya-taichou to do it for me."

Apparently forgetting temporarily that they shared the same office space as captain and lieutenant in the 10th Division, she neglected to pay attention to the fact that on the other side of the room, the snow-haired diminutively-sized captain sat at his desk with a tick mark on his head at his underling's brazen statement, "Rangiku just because we have guests to meet with doesn't mean you can slack off. I'm not going to do your work for you this time."

A whine from Rangiku emitted from her place on the couch and Hitsugaya let out a sigh before turning his attention to the man sitting in front of him across his desk, "So Uzumaki-san, you're looking to work out your payment for bringing the Seireitei information on whatever you can find in Hueco Mundo?" He said in a very serious manner.

It was kind of weird to see someone so young-looking be so stern, but Hitsugaya seemed to have a stone cold business-like demeanor. They obviously knew who they were selecting when they picked him. If they had sent him to Byakuya who was the only other obvious choice for this meeting the two of them would have just had a subtle back and forth of hurling veiled insults at each other until they eventually got the job done.

Pity, because it might have been fun. And then Tatsuki could have had a bit of a spar with Byakuya's lieutenant Renji. He seemed like the kind of guy that would have welcomed a sparring bout against her. Rangiku was ridiculously hot, but she also seemed a touch lazy.

"I know the only reason Yamamoto is actually going along with this is because you guys can't open a portal to Hueco Mundo." Naruto said, "At least not safely I think." He understood the name of the game. Until they had the resource they needed they would use him because he was in possession of it himself.

Though he was a bit irritated at the lack of a title on the end of the lead captain's name, Hitsugaya figured that a guy that ran roughshod over the Seireitei in its time of havoc didn't care too much about that, "It is a major issue. It's the reason why Aizen's escape to Hueco Mundo was so vexing. We have the 12th Division studying Hollows to learn how they can jump realms so freely, but a Senkaimon is impossible for us to establish to that realm."

Only a Garganta could be used, because instead of stabilizing the connection between dimensions the way a Senkaimon could for the parallel worlds of the Human World and the Soul Society, a Garganta had to tear into the dimensional fabric separating worlds.

How did he even manage to get there to begin with? Aizen had his evacuation plan all set and ready and it went off without a hitch, so when in the world did he ever make a trip to Hueco Mundo to begin with and how?

Just another question, the answer of which would elude them for the near future.

Speaking of questions that eluded them, the 12th Division was also studying Naruto for various reasons… but that was a more undercover kind of thing. No one outside of Captain Kurotsuchi, Nemu, and Yamamoto were aware of that though. It probably wouldn't have gone over so well amongst many of the higher ranking Shinigami had that been the case because it wasn't like he was brokering for the Seireitei's destruction, nor was he some catalyst of anarchy. He didn't even put himself into their dealings of his own volition.

To be quite frank he was just some guy that more or less got forced into the world of spirits and instead of ignoring it or flat out turning his back on it he simply chose to try and take control of the situation presented to him.

Naruto leaned back in his chair with a thoughtful look on his face, "I'm sure I don't want the Gotei 13 to come up with a method of getting to Hueco Mundo whenever you all want." He said, much to the surprise of everyone in the room, even his apprentice, "The whole name of our organization isn't just some cute title. If there was a way for the Shinigami to get into Hueco Mundo whenever they wanted it would be a genocide in there. It would be the equivalent of a powerful kingdom hunting down a bunch of weak tribes."

It was times like that when Naruto's age could be seen in his eyes. It didn't escape Hitsugaya's notice either. He wasn't deemed a prodigy and a genius for nothing if something like that could slip his glance.

"But this thing with Aizen is different." Naruto followed up with serious intent, "He's got an army and a blade ready to rip apart the fabric of the entire Soul Society, and he's going to kill more than 100,000 people to pull it off."

"Declaring war on the Spirit King is serious business." Hitsugaya stated with what seemed to be a perpetual bored scowl that must have been his general demeanor, "One could say that the Spirit King is the lynchpin to… everything."

"Ever seen him?" Naruto asked bluntly. If he was going in on this entire afterlife thing he might as well go all the way.

To his displeasure though, Hitsugaya simply shook his head in the negative, "Uzumaki-san I'm not even certain if the Spirit King is a person, a thing, or simply an abstract idea. No one that has seen him or it has come back. The Royal Guard live in the dimension of his palace for the remainder of their lives and they are the only ones that _might_ see him. Not even Yamamoto-sotaichou or any of the Central 46 have ever seen him. He has left the Soul Society to them and has no interest in it."

Over where she was sitting and couldn't help but overhear, Tatsuki stopped working on her hand-seals and slumped back in her seat on the sofa that Rangiku was lying down on. She didn't know what the hell she was even doing there. Even for someone like Naruto, her sensei, probably the strongest person she knew, all of this was so far over his head.

Stopping a man from winning an interdimensional war that would tear existence itself asunder? A figure that apparently had enough power to stand above the leader of the gods of death themselves? She just wanted to learn how to fight in order to keep pace with her friends that had seemed to be moving away from her into this world of things.

She didn't know if she was up for this.

"It's pretty heavy isn't it?"

"Huh?" Her musing came to an end when Rangiku's voice reached her. While the 10th Division captain and the over two millennia old shinobi kept hashing things out on their end, the seemingly carefree lieutenant of the same division was looking at Tatsuki from her same relaxed position on the couch as she continued laying down.

Still, Tatsuki could see that Rangiku knew exactly what she was feeling at that moment. Was it that clear to someone that didn't know her that well that she was starting to freak out about her circumstances? She thought that she was doing a great job so far in refraining from hyperventilating.

How embarrassing.

Rangiku didn't back down from her point though, "This whole thing. It makes you feel pretty insignificant." She lifted her hands as if they were weighted balances and started moving them up and down as if comparing things, "Humans believe that they're at the top in their existence but they're not. Pluses think that their existence is more important than humans over in the Living World, while Hollows see both as just prey in the long run. Shinigami think that they're superior to regular pluses and Hollows in the same vein, but then you learn about things like the Spirit King and everything else. It makes you feel insignificant no matter where you are on the ladder. It seems like there's always something else."

"So how do you deal with it?" Tatsuki asked, a bit miserly, "I feel like something low. I don't feel like I'm supposed to be here at all."

Rangiku sat up and graced her with a smile in return, "Now what kind of attitude is that? Of course you're supposed to be here. Where else would you be?"

Home? In a normal dojo where she had been before her curiosity got her deeper into all of this past just seeing ghosts? Take your pick.

Rangiku flicked her on the forehead, getting a glare out of the dark-haired high school student, "You can do what you want, but I'm going to just ask you if anyone else thinks you should just cop out and quit, or if you belong just like the rest of your human friends."

Tatsuki's shoulder's stopped being so tense, but she still felt extremely skeptical at her place in all of this. Then again, what qualified someone like Ichigo, or Orihime, or Chad. Uryuu was born into it, but the rest of them had only been at it since the start of spring.

'Maybe she's right.' Rangiku just went back to relaxing again with a large yawn and left Tatsuki alone with her thoughts again once she had spoken her peace. Who knew she had that in her? Tatsuki wouldn't have guessed as much, 'I'm different from Orihime and Chad, and even Ichigo and Uryuu, but that doesn't mean that I'm that far out of place does it?'

"Okay." Hitsugaya said back over at his desk, scribbling down his signature more than likely on an official set of forms before stamping them multiple times in different places, "This is the contract worked out for your payment in exchange for the information you can bring us from Hueco Mundo." He handed it over for Naruto to read, "The figure on the page is what I feel is acceptable for the services requested. Do you disagree?"

Having known full-well exactly what money was worth in the Soul Society and having signed a litany of contracts throughout the years for various reasons, Naruto counted the zeroes at the end of the figure and quickly perused through the fifteen page contract. Ugh, paperwork.

Seeing nothing out of place that he hadn't already expected, and seeing nothing that was a deal-breaker, Naruto signed his own name and handed it back to Hitsugaya who nodded and filed it away to make a copy of later for Naruto in posterity, if he desired one of course.

Thank goodness that was done. The business portion of his job was the part Naruto hated more than anything else, "Hey Hitsugaya."

"Hitsugaya-taichou."

"I'm not calling you that."

A low grunt came from Hitsugaya at Naruto's refusal to refer to him by title, "What do you need?"

A smile came to Naruto's face as he sounded a bit embarrassed at what he was about to say, "Well I've only ever fought two Shingami for real and I just wanted to say… that I want to fight you sometime. Just a friendly little battle, nothing big." He'd be lying if he said he wasn't curious about how strong the rest of the Gotei 13 captains were after taking on his fair share of them.

"Perhaps when times aren't so tumultuous." Hitsugaya would also be lying if he said that he wasn't curious about Naruto's combat skills. Someone that could go up against Yamamoto and not be decimated had to be impressive, "What are you going to do when you get to Hueco Mundo? An attack on Aizen probably won't be possible."

"I know that." Naruto said, agreeing with Hitsugaya's point. Even if he knew where to go for the attack he'd have to go through a veritable murderer's row to even get to the man, "We need to find where he is first. Otherwise we're just going to have to wait for him to finally attack Karakura Town at full strength and try to destroy his army then."

Nobody liked the sound of that. Who wanted to fight an army?

The turquoise eyes of Hitsugaya narrowed on Naruto at the precarious-sounding plan of action, "What if you find an opening to finish things then and there? You said it wasn't your ambition to fight anyone's war."

Well that was an easy enough question to answer. There _wasn't_ going to be any opening to end anything found, but the question was purely hypothetical. A 'what if' scenario that was being presented, "If I find an opening to put an end to this crap then I'll do it." Naruto told him, "Fighting someone else's battle and keeping all of endiness from being ripped apart are completely different things."

"So you'll kill Aizen if you get the chance?" It was a question from Hitsugaya because he personally wanted to end the man's life himself, "To save the world?"

Naruto just smirked momentarily before it faded just as quickly as it formed and he stood up from his seat, motioning for Tatsuki to come with him as it was time to go, "A guy like that… he'll have every angle covered. We're not gonna get close."

Something about that didn't sound right. Though she would never call herself a tactician, Rangiku was well aware of when something didn't seem advantageous, "Then why go?"

"Someone has to. You can't be afraid." Naruto said as he reached the door and left with Tatsuki in tow. His voice carried back down the hall to the room as they walked further away, "Besides, even if every time you drop a stone it falls to the floor you never know what'll happen the next time. It'll probably fall to the floor again but what if that if one time out of an infinity, instead of falling to the floor the stone floats up to the ceiling?"

As the footsteps of their guests left the premises of the office, Rangiku looked confusedly at her young captain Hitsugaya, "What in the world was he talking about just now?" That sounded like a bunch of gibberish to her, but then again that guy was weird.

"It's not that complicated really." Hitsugaya said as he got back to work with a small smile on his face as he kept going through his paperwork. He knew exactly what Naruto was implying, "Past experience never proves the future, and basic logic about things means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme." Someone took the time to read a few books in his day. Surprising.

"Because?" The strawberry blonde lieutenant asked as she started gathering her cluttered forms together to begin her own work.

"-Because we deal in the strange and supernatural for a living. Things that humans think are unfeasible we as Shinigami take for granted every single day Rangiku." Hitsugaya concluded, "…Nothing is impossible, and in the end you just never know."

Rangiku had a feeling that were it not for an expressed order for all seated officers to remain at the ready to be dispatched any time to deal with the Arrancar threat Hitsugaya would have preferred going with the Equilibrium group into the fray of Hueco Mundo.

XxX

(Sometime Later – Outside of the Seireitei – West Rukongai District 3)

The massive gates had long since left the view of both Naruto and Tatsuki as they left the borders of the Seireitei and felt the strain that being within the capital city put on their chakra taken off of them. It was a pain to be in there where they could feel their power lessened due to the nature of the barrier around the city. Being in the Rukongai felt way better.

As they walked through the third town of plus souls away from the capital, Tatsuki was taking quite well to the things that she had been seeing for the first time, but that could have been because all of her friends told her to expect anything when she informed them earlier that day that she would be accompanying Naruto on this mission. It was just to gain experience. She was the only one that had never seen the Soul Society before.

"You ready to go to Hueco Mundo?" Naruto asked Tatsuki as he started channeling chakra to his eyes and revealed to her the Rinnegan that still freaked her out a bit looking at it, "Don't worry. I'll protect you, I just want you to have the experience of going."

Yes, because every good sensei endeavored to put their students into the most treacherous of situations just to see what they were made of. It just so happened that this one was way beyond anything any other teacher would have their student do.

A sigh came from Tatsuki before life sprang to her face and she gave Naruto a confident grin, "Yeah, I'll be fine. Don't worry about me. It's not like we're going to be alone in there. We've got a team coming right?"

That was right. Not a chance that Naruto would go into Hueco Mundo with just him and Tatsuki. That would be completely moronic. There was to be a team awaiting their arrival once they arrived.

"Wait!"

Before Naruto could begin the hand-seals to summon the Gedou, a shout got their attention. Turning around, they both saw a petite Shinigami girl with purple hair in a bun held by a cloth. Over her Shinigami garb she had a lieutenant's armband and looked a bit distraught.

"What do you need?" Naruto asked with a small smile on his face. She looked a bit tired, but he figured she had run all the way from somewhere inside of the Seireitei to catch up with them, "I'm sorry I don't know your name."

"Hinamori Momo. Lieutenant of the 5th Division." She said as she caught her breath. The reason she looked tired was because she had used a Kidou to mask her presence until she was able to slip outside of the Seireitei with Naruto and Tatsuki, "I want to come with you. I know where you're going."

Word had spread through the Seireitei amongst the Shinigami from the last time that Naruto had ventured into Hueco Mundo because he had a Shinigami envoy with him to bring the tale back. When word of his presence in the Seireitei in preparation for another trip came forward Momo knew that she had to meet this man.

So she hid herself with her mastery in Kidou and eavesdropped on his meeting with her childhood friend Hitsugaya just outside of his office. She needed to go with him to Hueco Mundo.

A bit thrown off at first, Naruto thought to all of the divisions and remembered the ones without captains. At that point he frowned as he looked at Momo, "No." He stated flatly, "I can't take you with us."

"But I'm capable, I promise!" Momo assured him, "I won't get in your way! I was taught well! I just need to see Aizen-taichou again… please." She finished a bit desperately, "Maybe… maybe if I can convince him to stop, or maybe I can discover who or what is controlling him and put an end to it."

Poor girl. Was that man really her entire world to that extent? This was kind of scary. She looked as if she were on the verge of tears. Tatsuki felt pity for her. A human feeling pity for a Shinigami; that simply didn't seem right.

That made it all the worse when Naruto had to turn her down again, "I'm not taking you." He asserted stronger than previously, "This doesn't go any further than Aizen. He's the top. He's the reason this is happening. This isn't going to end until he's taken down, and you're not going to help me pull that off. So no."

"You're going to fight him just like that?" Momo asked, seemingly bewildered at it, "I can't draw a weapon against Aizen-taichou! I'm sure he had a reason for doing what he did. Just give him a chance."

At that point Naruto turned his back and started walking away. He didn't want to reveal the Gedou to this girl. Who knew what she would do? Maybe something crazy like diving into it once she realized it was the portal, "I know a bit of what you're feeling, trust me. And sometimes there's nothing you can do to make things right. Not at times like this. Go home. All you're going to do is get someone killed. Maybe even you."

He knew that for sure. He'd made the same mistake as Momo in the past and he had to live with them every day, literally. Thinking that he could make everything right, save everyone including his 'best friend' that clearly didn't want to be saved and liked being in the darkness.

Naruto wasn't going to be an enabler in that kind of endeavor. He'd walked that far in the snow before and knew where that trail ended. There was a time for talking, and that time was long over.

But her eyes didn't seem like she was going to just take a no at face value.

Momo was a liability that much was for sure. The girl wasn't well. But Tatsuki hadn't seen Naruto turn so cold before for anything. There wasn't any warmth in the way he was speaking.

"I can't do that. You're the only person that can take me to Hueco Mundo." Momo said quietly, her head down and shadowing her face as she slowly drew her Zanpakutou, "You're my only chance… my only hope of seeing him again before something terrible happens. You can't say no!" She shouted as she rushed at Naruto with her weapon set to do him harm.

Was he really going to have to knock that girl out and leave her in the street to put an end to this?

Actually he didn't have to do a thing.

Because as Momo's sword descended, an angry Tatsuki stood in her way and blocked the strike with her trench knives, "Okay. Then I'll say it for him." She broke Momo's posture with a hard shove and kicked her in the stomach to knock her away swiftly, "No!" Attack her sensei on her watch? Even if he was fully capable of defending himself that wasn't the point.

At first Naruto was offended that Tatsuki thought that he needed anyone to protect himself, but that quickly dissipated when he realized that it was more of an act of loyalty than fear that he would be harmed. He appreciated the thought.

It didn't take much for Momo to recover from the strike and she moved to head back in to attack again until Naruto's voice stopped her, "Wait." For some reason she actually listened and held off of attacking when he held his arm up. He planted a hand on Tatsuki's shoulder to convey 'good job' to her, but now wasn't the time to say it, "Are you really that serious about going to Hueco Mundo?"

"Of course." Momo sounded resolute about going if nothing else, "I don't care if it's against Seireitei orders. Someone has to go." Not someone. Her in particular.

They didn't have time for this. There had to be a fast solution that would nip this in the bud, "Okay. Beat Tatsuki and I'll let you come with us."

That was a response that Momo hadn't been expecting, "What?"

"What?" Nor Tatsuki apparently.

But Naruto stuck to his guns on that one and jumped from the dirt road onto the top of a nearby building where he sat down on the roof, "You heard me. If you can beat Tatsuki-chan, my apprentice, I'll let you come to Hueco Mundo with us. Lose and you won't even have the option of chasing after us because you won't be in the condition to." 'Don't be afraid Tatsuki-chan. You're stronger than you think.'

Had she been in her normal state of mind, Momo might have had a problem with a condition such as that, but as she was she simply held up her Zanpakutou ready to fight. The path seemed to be as clear as day to her even though it was about to be night in that part of the Soul Society.

Well Tatsuki had seemingly been ready to fight before the ultimatum was given, so it didn't really change much of anything. All she could do was try her best, and if she was going to lose it wasn't going to be an easy victory for her opponent.

But as she scrutinized Momo she noticed things that she wouldn't have before she started training. Momo was holding her sword too tightly to be comfortable for combat. Her posture didn't show much confidence in her swordsmanship, however she seemed to plan on using it anyway as a melee weapon. Her eyes had bags underneath them. If she looked harder she probably could have found more but she had already seen enough.

Naruto stayed silent and waited for this to play itself out. Hopefully his loyal scouting party could wait just a bit longer for he and Tatsuki to arrive.

XxX

(Hueco Mundo)

Sitting down in the middle of the desert felt a bit like home to Gaara, but even he had limitations on his patience. His dark-ringed eyes opened up and a frown crossed his normally impassive face as he held his tanuki claw halberd and planted the pole end into the sand to stand up, "He's late."

"I'm not surprised…" With him for some reason was the silver-haired brawler of the Visoreds; Muguruma Kensei, "I look at Uzumaki Naruto and the first thing that jumps to mind isn't really 'punctuality' to be honest."

Instead of a normal member of Equilibrium, another person from a different group had volunteered to go into the realm of the Hollows as well, otherwise it would have just been Gaara and one other accompanying Naruto and Tatsuki through the sand dunes. He figured that they owed Naruto something and this was his way of paying it forward. Also, if he managed to get a shot at one of those Seireitei backstabbers that screwed him and his friends over he was definitely going to take it.

"Having Tatsuki with him should have made him better about that." Gaara said before grumbling under his breath, "Unless he got caught up trying to show her as much of the Soul Society that he thought would be fun to show her…" That was entirely possible. But no, not really. He knew when it was time to work and time to play.

Kensei was sick of having to blink grains of sand out of his eyes though, even if he understood that the professional atmosphere of Equilibrium was rather lax as long as the job got done, "Well if he doesn't hurry up I might have to kick the crap out of him. I'm feeling kind of exposed out here all things considered."

As he said that he shot a glance in the direction of the third member of the makeshift team who seemed to be standing off on her own, staring into the distance somewhere.

She had long light blue-green hair that blew in the wind from where she was standing and a light green bodysuit with her Zanpakutou buckled around her waist and at her side. The thing that gave Kensei a bit of pause was the skull mask on top of her head.

"I am an Arrancar as well." Gaara pointed out, realizing why Kensei was wary of their temporary teammate, "Does that give you pause?"

"You're different." Talking subtly wasn't Kensei's strong point and he was never one for sugarcoating it, but even so he still knew that Gaara had definitely never done anything wrong. As far as he knew Gaara had never even devoured a human in his entire existence, even as a Hollow, "You know what I'm talking about."

Gaara nodded in understanding, but still held to his own point, "I can assure you that everything is fine. While she isn't with us, she has agreed to assist us just for this."

It wasn't as if their female companion couldn't hear them, "I've already said that I hold no allegiance to Aizen Sousuke any longer. I'm not fighting unless it's necessary, even for you all." She then turned around with a composed and level-headed expression on her face, "I hope that isn't a problem."

"It isn't." With Naruto not around, Gaara felt the need to take some semblance of command over the situation and he would keep it until his friend arrived to relinquish it to, "Nelliel-san we promised you that you wouldn't have to raise your hand in battle and we will adhere to that."

With a nod, Nel turned back to her own observation of the Hueco Mundo desert, in the same direction she had been facing before, "And in return, out of gratitude for protecting me in my vulnerable state and my Fracción I will guide you to Las Noches. The fortress of the Arrancar Army."

* * *

**You know, I know why I write this stuff for fun. I didn't know at first when I started, but I'm realizing why after having done this for over two years in one form or another. Because regular life for the vast majority of people is very underwhelming. Take mine for example.**

**It ain't bad, but there are just too many things I wish I could fix. Nothing that a good world-travelling adventure to save the world with strange superpowers couldn't fix either. Right now I'm just some guy.**

**You know what, actually you can forget about the superpowers. I already have the fighting skill, not bad but it's good enough for some decent scenes. Just give me some guns, a grievance against my enemy, a rich benefactor, and some hero plot armor and send me out there to fight the currently existing terrorists of the world.**

…**I think I just thought of a plot for a new manga. Note to self: write this crap down in a notebook while you can get on a roll with this idea. Time to spin me a moneymaking yarn.**

**Ah, whatever, it doesn't matter.**

**I hope you enjoyed everybody. Kenchi out.**


	30. Weapon of Choice

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. And to the mysterious and intrepid yet foolish fool of fooldom who endeavors to challenge me for the rights to True Warriors Never Die the way I keep challenging Kishimoto; if you think a headlock is all it'll take to beat me you're out of your rabid-ass mind. You'd better know what you're doing or I'll suplex you on your head son.

You'd better bring a knife if you want to win that fistfight… and you'd better hope I don't take it from you.

Honestly… the day I get mother f'n headlocked by _anyone_ in a fight I'll friggin retire.

**Chapter 30: Weapon of Choice**

* * *

A fight… against a lieutenant in an army full of death gods… and her sensei who was the most powerful pure human being on the planet was completely green lighting the whole thing. Okay, sure. Why not?

Sometimes Tatsuki had to wonder just what her life would be like had she not tried to beat up the weird new blond kid in class after he said scared her. What if she hadn't been so suspicious of him and hadn't met with him on the roof of his weird new converted warehouse?

Well there was nothing she could do about it now. The moment she sprang to Naruto's defense when Momo attacked him she lost the chance to be a bystander in this fight. She didn't even want to go to Hueco Mundo as that place seemed creepy.

Instead of going on this little learning excursion with Naruto she'd have probably chosen to trade Momo for her place if she had the option and if the petite Shinigami had not rubbed her the wrong way in trying to stab her teacher from behind.

"I won't let you stand in my way." Momo said quietly, her hands shaking at the thought of being so close to seeing her beloved Aizen again, "I'll go right through you if I have to!" She shouted as she ran forward, Zanpakutou in hand to attack Tatsuki.

'Uh-oh, time to focus up!' Tatsuki thought to herself as she held her trench knives at the ready. Momo's sword struck against the jagged teeth of her weapons and threw up sparks as she pressed against the human girl, 'Wait, I can stand up to this?'

Everyone she fought to train had overwhelmed her from the start. In the beginning Naruto kicked her all over creation, and still did as a matter of fact. Ichigo pushed her all over the practice field, likewise for Chad except that he hurled her all over the field. And Hidan never struck just once against her guard. He always utilized an all out assault.

And after dealing with that, was she really capable of keeping up with a lieutenant? Only one way to find out.

Tatsuki shifted her guard into crossing up the teeth of her trench knives, trapping Momo's sword within and allowing her to push it to the side to kick her in the face. She froze in place as a stunned Momo stumbled back.

'I hit her? I hit her again!'

'She… hit me? Again?'

'There you go Tatsuki-chan.' Naruto thought to himself as he continued to sit on a nearby house and observe, 'You're used to dealing with people far stronger than Momo here.' Not only physically, but overall. When you're forced to work to keep up with monsters you either adapt and improve or you find yourself destroyed, 'Let's put that absurd growth rate of yours to the test and see what you've got.'

"No…" Momo said, touching at her torso where Tatsuki had managed to strike her for the second time, "This can't be possible…" Her voice was somewhat rattled as she continued, "There's no way I can let myself lose when Aizen-taichou is being controlled by that awful Ichimaru or Tousen! I won't!"

She was about to come back again in force and Naruto's face hardened into that of a harsh taskmaster as he barked out his instruction, "Tatsuki! This isn't some point-sparring tournament! When you break her attack don't let up or you'll give her a chance to get your moves down! See the opening and finish her!"

Easier said than done as far as Tatsuki was concerned, especially when Momo used Shunpo to move next. Survival instinct kicked in and Tatsuki turned to the correct side in time to defend herself. Still, Momo got her off-guard and managed to come close enough past her trench knives to cut her bicep. Blood flowed from the cut through the rip in her shirt as she continued to defend against Momo's sword strikes.

'I need to be faster! This isn't cutting it!' Tatsuki thought to herself, wincing at the stinging wound while Momo continued to blitz her. They clashed blades again and this time Tatsuki spun through her own block to deposit a back elbow into her Shinigami adversary's belly, "Houou Tsubasa (Phoenix Wing)!"

Like a quick rock and roll pyro display, fire discharged from the point of contact and engulfed Momo in a flash of flames that went out as quickly as they appeared. The burns hurt immensely, and temporarily blocked her vision. When fire didn't fill her view, the sole of Tatsuki's shoe did as she wound up being kicked hard in the face.

This time Momo flew through the air and landed on her back on the ground. Her eyes were shut with pain and when she opened them she found Tatsuki falling from the air at her with her fist cocked to strike. She gasped and quickly built up her energy, "Hajike, Tobiume (Snap, Flying Plum Tree)!"

Momo's Zanpakutou straightened out and grew prongs like a jutte on the sides of the blade. A fireball formed down by the handle and with a reckless swing she let it fly up at Tatsuki who had no way of moving out of the way.

The fireball hit and exploded before Tatsuki could land in a grand display that lit up the growing darkness of the Soul Society's early night. Anyone that didn't feel like coming outside before definitely weren't going to venture outdoors now.

From her place on the ground Momo looked up with a horrified look at what she had just done. That was a human girl, a human girl that she had started the conflict with, and she had just released her Zanpakutou in order to cause her harm. She had killed her.

At least she thought she had. Chunks of barrel that hadn't been blown to debris in the blast fell to the ground, confusing Momo thoroughly until she could feel the Reiatsu of the girl she was seeking, holding a hand to her chest and breathing heavily, "You…" Tatsuki said, holding up an accusatory finger in Momo's direction, "You… cheater! I didn't know we could shoot fireballs at each other!"

"No rules in a deathmatch Tatsuki-chan." Naruto deadpanned, wishing that he could flick a pebble at her forehead right then. He would have had there not been a fight going on at the moment, "Good Kawarimi though. Nice eye."

With Tatsuki's survival being confirmed, Momo's guilt faded and she got back up, "Well now that I know you can handle yourself, I don't have to treat you like just another human anymore. I can get serious now." Tatsuki was giving her a look as if to ask her if she shot fireballs from her sword at every ornery human, not just the superpowered ones, "I've told you before I won't lose here! Tobiume!"

"Oh hell." Tatsuki said, quickly rolling through hand-seals when she saw Momo wind up to swing her sword in her direction again. Luckily by now the needed seals for her jutsu of choice were second nature to her by now, "Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu (Fire Release: Grand Fireball Jutsu)!"

Both girls shot their respective fire attacks at the other, and when they met the entire street was engulfed in flames. It looked as if the whole neighborhood would go up in smoke until a clap was heard and a barrier of air formed, sucking the oxygen right out of the fire.

"Fuuton: Akuma no Shinkuu (Wind Release: Devil's Vacuum)!"

Eyes turned to Naruto who still sat on the roof, his hands still outstretched from the large amount of space he had just drained of flames. Other than that he merely remained seated with an objective look on his face and gestured for them to continue.

Not needing anyone's permission to keep fighting for her chance to go to Hueco Mundo, Momo again vanished in Shunpo as it seemed to fluster Tatsuki into making mistakes the first time. Unprepared for it again, Tatsuki suffered a cut to her back before she could even turn around. Lashing out in retaliation left her vulnerable, thus she ended up doing a 360 in anticipation of another criss-cross move.

The second time was different than she had been expecting however, as instead of the anticipated sword attack that she received the last time, Tatsuki prepared herself for something that never came. Swordplay was not Momo's forte and she did not relish getting into swordfights.

She was a specialist in the art of Kidou, and even in her clouded state of mind she still retained enough raw skills to string something dangerous together.

"Hadou #58: Tenran (Way of Destruction #58: Orchid Sky)!" Momo had gained a little bit of space while attacking from Tatsuki's weak side this time as she had her Zanpakutou levitating and spinning like a fan prior to stopping it suddenly, blowing a tornado-like blast in Tatsuki's direction.

Tatsuki dug her feet in and stuck to the solid earth beneath her with chakra, but still found her grip slipping and loosening due to the push factor from Momo's wind attack. The dust and debris kicked up as well, and she had to squint to keep it from getting into her eyes. But even so, the flaming beacon at the origin end of the tornado didn't bode well for her, 'Oh no!'

Momo was going to shoot a fireball from her Zanpakutou straight through the center of the tornado, using it like a funnel to make sure that she couldn't miss her target. An indistinct kind of madness danced in her eyes and the fire from her weapon only illuminated it.

Naruto didn't like the look he saw from her. She was completely bewitched. What the hell did Aizen do to her? Naruto had seen women in desperate love that hadn't been as determined and unstable as Momo was. This was getting a bit too dangerous for his Tatsuki-chan. But he had to believe in his pupil. She could do it. She was smart.

On the actual field of battle though, the female martial artist was completely beside herself.

'No, not like this. Not tonight.' Not in her chance to show that she really was worth bestowing so many secrets and special techniques onto. She wasn't going to take all of the training that she had done to be useful to her friends like Orihime and Ichigo and fail her first time away from the relative safety of Karakura Town.

She didn't want Naruto-sensei to hold her hand through it. She didn't need Ichigo, Chad, and Uryuu to back her up and save her when she got in over her head. She didn't require Yoruichi, Gaara, or Hidan to look over her shoulder to make sure that she was alright. She didn't want Orihime to have to fret over her while healing her.

She wanted to win. She never wanted to win at anything more in her entire life. This was more than just some national tournament. Finishing second here was just as good as finishing dead, and even if Naruto did plan in on jumping in to protect her, if he had done so she wouldn't have known what to do with herself from that moment forward.

Yeah, that was all well and good but she was still facing down a fireball. If she kept her chakra holding her to the ground she was a sitting duck to take it head-on, but if she let go of her chakra grip and tried to dodge she'd just get blown away by the tornado _and_ take a direct hit from Momo's fireball.

Well there was always option three. The one that didn't involve her being hit by a fireball at all. She just had to come up with the specifics of said plan first.

Tatsuki's grip tightened on the trench knife in her right hand as she started building chakra to it. It was time to take a chance and see just what she could do with all of the lessons taught to her. The weapon glowed blue with her chakra, 'Chakra flow. Hien (Flying Swallow).' Now she needed a little something extra and she added it by breathing onto the blade, 'Katon. Fire release.' And last but not least a little bit of Rasengan training, 'Add power!'

Her entire right hand, blazed orange-hot with the flames of her own creation and she did the only thing that she could that would be able to counter her precarious situation. She punched the ground at an angle that fractured the dirt street in Momo's direction with an orange glow within it.

The earth-shaking punch compromised her footing and sidetracked her attempt to hurl a fireball at Tatsuki. When she looked down at the glowing orange crack in the ground it had opened enough to shoot a blazing hot burst of flames up high into the air, and right in Momo's face.

Even Naruto had to let out an impressed whistle at Tatsuki, "She came up with that on the spot?" He knew damn well he hadn't taught her how to make her own jutsu yet. He didn't even know she was that far along in her elemental transformation and shape manipulation to do so. But there was always the possibility that she merely lucked out and pulled something special out of her ass, "Whatever… I can't be a hypocrite about something like that."

The fire that shot out of the ground, while the entire width of the crack that Tatsuki had created, was controlled by the ground that surrounded it before it flew up, thus it wasn't dangerous to anything other than what was in the path of the crack and what was above it. It was as clean as could be, well for a jutsu that shot blazing flames fifty feet into the air. No hand-seals either.

This girl was scary. He had only been training her since the end of June. What in the world was making her improve so quickly? It was leaps and bounds. She went from fighting like a gifted rookie to a legitimate prospect on the rise right before his eyes.

He was going to have to figure this out one way or another, because this just wasn't natural. It was a bit Ichigo-esque, even though Ichigo would still eat Tatsuki for breakfast and spit out the bones if they ever fought for real. This wasn't to be graded on the Substitute Shinigami's curve though. He had to literally die to even use his powers. That kind of made up for being a teenage death god.

Tatsuki stood there breathing heavily, face covered in soot and sweat. Note to self, that jutsu… don't ever do it without better stamina. That took far too much out of her to perform. No wonder Naruto still wouldn't teach her Kage Bunshin. Her desperation jutsu zapped her reserves. Cool as all hell though. Yeah, who was badass today? Arisawa Tatsuki was. Next generation ninja extraordinaire.

And Momo really showed that she was indeed a Shinigami lieutenant as she was alive and still standing. A round yellow shield of Reiatsu stood in front of her with her hands out, but it only kept her body from taking the full damage. As the attack came from underneath she still took the lion's share of the flames.

At least they weren't flames from Yamamoto or she wouldn't even be alive to tell the tale.

"It's not over…" Momo said quietly, almost as if she were speaking to herself. Her Shinigami outfit was badly burned, and the visible skin underneath it didn't seem to be any better off. She needed medical attention.

Well if she wanted to keep fighting, Tatsuki would be willing enough to oblige her. But Naruto held her back from advancing with an iron grip on her shoulder. When did he get down from the roof? She looked back and up at him to argue but stopped when she saw the look in his eyes. It wasn't the man that tried to put in humor with his lessons, or that played with her during spars to get her to try harder.

This was the man that was well over 2000 years of age, the part of him that was justifiably able to teach her and show a world of things she'd thought not existed. That had seen more than she could possibly comprehend.

"That's enough." Naruto said, his presence actually calming down Tatsuki's rapidly beating heart. Sparing her a small grin, Naruto leaned down and gave her a short peck on the forehead as a fond gesture, "You did great. I knew you could pull it off."

A red-faced Tatsuki just grumbled under her breath at Naruto's cavalier display. If anyone were around to see that she'd have tried to lay him out just out of principle. It did make her feel admittedly more awesome though.

Momo meanwhile, still wasn't taking no for an answer, "What? It's not over yet! I can still fight!" She didn't care what he said, she was going to Hueco Mundo, and she was going to convince Aizen to come home no matter what it took, "I won't let you ruin my last chance to save him!" She lifted her hands and started an incantation when she saw Naruto hold an arm out towards her. His eyes changed for just a moment and she went hurtling through the air right at him.

She shut her eyes in anticipation of her life ending but when she came to a sudden stop she felt no more pain other than the injuries already inflicted upon her. She found herself held up by the collar in the grasp of her ticket to the realm of the Hollows, her feet just dangling off of the ground.

Naruto shook his head at her with a saddened look in his eye, "Look at what you're doing. Is this you? You picked a fight against me and my apprentice, you tried to kill her twice, and you're still trying to attack us. All just to go to Hueco Mundo, to see someone that threw you away."

"He's… waiting." Momo struggled to say, tears filling her eyes. Why did she have to be so weak? She was a lieutenant damn it, "He needs someone to save him, someone to clear this all up."

"Momo…" Naruto said, a frown adorning his whisker-marked face. Things like this really made him feel his age, "People that abandon the people that love them are worse than trash. But it doesn't apply when you were the one abandoned. He left you. He tried to turn this place on its head, to try and become a God, or whatever he left to go do. All I know is that he's gearing up to try and take every single soul in Karakura Town for whatever he wants." He gave her a shake, "Stop it. Stop defending him. Please, stop making excuses for him before someone gets hurt."

The way they did when he kept making excuses for _his _friend. A young man that he would swear to anyone that would listen that he could redeem. He promised that he would shoulder all of his friend's hate, that he would die with him to keep it from spreading and harming anyone else if needed. Only until past the point where it was too late did he realize that there wasn't anything he could do.

It was too bad that the world had to pay for it and everyone else around them had to die first… and they were still the last ones standing, in one way or another.

Here though Momo wasn't him, and Aizen definitely wasn't Sasuke. There would be no technical draw here. No eternal stalemate between equals. Aizen Sousuke would wantonly butcher her and move along as if he had merely stepped on an ant.

Could he get through to her though? Kami he hoped so, "The people you've still got here, what are you going to do about them? You're the lieutenant of a whole division, you can't just run off in the middle of the night like that. If you keep going like this you'll end up getting a lot of people killed." Possibly everyone, "Don't do what I did. There are others that count on you."

But from the look in her eyes his pleas only served to hurt her heart. With resigned sigh, Naruto just let her go and Momo slinked to her knees on the ground. Unohana was going to tear him a new one, and Hitsugaya was probably going to try and kill him when he eventually came back to report on what he found to Yamamoto, he was sure of it, but for now they had to go. They were late to arrive as it was, and with the amassed party waiting in Hueco Mundo on their arrival he was going to get chewed out collectively.

With a motion from Naruto to follow him, both he and Tatsuki walked past Momo who seemed to be a bit broken as Naruto latched onto Tatsuki and the vanished in a whirlwind of leaves to gain some quick and clandestine distance in case she tried to attack them again.

Momo didn't try to pursue. She didn't even look up or turn around in the slightest. She was actually considering using her Zanpakutou on Naruto to stab him at the close range that he presented to her. She had to stop herself from driving her sword through his belly.

And he had done that on purpose. To see how deep her psychosis really was. While it still existed in spades, Aizen's bewitching of this girl had lessened in severity in his absence. She had a very rational mind and a good head on her shoulders, it was just misty whenever the topic of her former captain came up.

Such a show of faith that there was something rational within her… or confidence that even if she attacked him he could protect himself and stop it.

She wished to believe that it was the former.

XxX

(Karakura Town – Ichigo's House)

While Ichigo was no stranger to receiving strange guests in his home, after all he housed a recovery Shinigami within his closet the tail-end of the last school semester, but the way that this current houseguest had made their appearance was way more annoying than Rukia's stay.

Directly in front of him, on his floor, in his room sat a little black cat that stared up at him with mischievous yellow eyes and a slowly waving tail. Now normally this wouldn't have been much of a problem, and he would have sent the felonious feline packing upon seeing it, but Yoruichi had a knack for keeping herself hidden and he didn't notice she was there until he got into the house and one of his sisters then pointed out the cat following him. It was like it came out of absolutely nowhere, but he knew better.

And out of his two sisters Yuzu loved Yoruichi's cat form, so even though he so sorely wished to and he knew exactly what it was really, Ichigo couldn't just grab the beast by the scruff of its neck and hurl it down the block to get it away from bugging him.

Goddamn it Yuzu. Why did she have to like _everything_ cute?

So there Yoruichi was, merely taunting him with her unrestricted access to his home just because his little sister was currently sitting in front of his bed cuddling the cat like there was no tomorrow.

"Yuzu." Ichigo said in an effort to try and distract her from the transformable supernatural cat, "You've been playing with that cat all afternoon. Did you do your homework?" That got the sweet brown-haired girl to freeze in her ministrations and slowly put Yoruichi down, "Well?"

Her voice came out in a mumble at first, but when Ichigo cupped a hand to his ear, wordlessly asking her to speak up she couldn't lie to her big brother, "…No. But can I take the cat with me? I'll still do my homework!"

Ichigo ran a hand through his orange hair but shook his head nonetheless, "No you won't. And besides, we can't keep the cat here. It doesn't belong to us. Someone could be missing it." There wasn't a look of humor on his face past his usual slight scowl, but he was so glad he was able to say the following things out loud and Yoruichi couldn't do anything about it, "It came from the street, so there could be all kinds of nasty bugs on it. Who knows what kind of diseases it could be carrying?"

The implication was not lost and that was the point.

Thank goodness Yuzu couldn't feel spiritual energy, because Yoruichi was leaking Reiatsu in anger of what Ichigo had the gall to say out loud, "I don't think this little guy has anything like that." Oh, she would have been pinned to the floor from the sheer pressure of it.

"Trust me Yuzu, it could have been rooting around with God knows what and you'd never know." Oh yes, he was enjoying this. Did that make him a bad person? Nah, you had to take the small victories anywhere you could get them, "Keep it here so I can get it out in a bit."

Well he was her older brother, and he was basically in charge whenever their dad was busy with the clinic so she had to listen to him. With a pout on her face she put the cat down to the side and got up to go do her homework. Maybe if she finished quickly enough Ichigo wouldn't have given the creature the boot yet so she could play with it a bit more?

To try and deter him from getting up to get rid of the cat before she was done, Yuzu shut Ichigo's door, thus leaving the Substitute Shinigami and the former 2nd Division Captain alone in his room.

First and foremost, Yoruichi brandished her claws before speaking in the strange male voice that came with her cat form, "So… diseases and bugs you say?"

Ichigo crossed his arms and turned his gaze out his window defensively, "Hey, Naruto's been running around the world for basically two millennia and he's a guy. Who knows what kind of nasty old world syphilis he could have picked up?" The source material for those damn books of his had to come from somewhere right? Experience probably.

Even if that were the case, and it definitely wasn't, a soul or a Shinigami couldn't suffer the physical ails of humans… at least _from_ them. Soul Society had its own list of similar sicknesses and whatnot for those with spiritual power though. You just had to ask Ukitake about that.

"Just how promiscuous do you perceive the two of us to be?" Yoruichi asked with quite a bit of actual curiosity. Between her personality and Naruto's she could pretty much see where a prude like Ichigo would get that kind of idea, "You act as if we rut every four hours like rabbits or something."

"And you're saying that you don't?" Ichigo asked, raising a disbelieving eyebrow her way.

Yoruichi seemed a touch offended and jumped onto Ichigo's bed to get a closer point to glare at him from, "Hardly. We _do_ usually have work to do, namely involving trying to help you keep this town of yours safe from Hollows, Arrancar, and recently Bounts. We're adults."

"About that." Ichigo said, trying to get a serious conversation going now that he had Yoruichi there in essence, "Aizen's aiming to go after my town, so why am I not going to Hueco Mundo with Naruto and Gaara?" They had even chosen to receive Kensei of the Visoreds to go with them, and he wasn't even going to delve into the weirdness of what was up with Nel, "It's my responsibility to protect Karakura Town isn't it?"

His point was admirable. There was a madman out there that wanted every soul within his city limits for some kind of spirit tool. It wasn't that narrow of a window for a threat though. Depending on what Aizen did with what he created, he could ruin the balance of the worlds altogether. Not just the Soul Society or the Human World, Hueco Mundo would more than likely suffer as well.

"I see what you're trying to say." Yoruichi said, fixing Ichigo with a thoughtful expression on her feline face, "But it depends on how much you're willing to risk if you truly desire to take your shot at taking him down. Are you willing to leave this town vulnerable to attack in order to do so? Because that's why it was elected to take others. In all reality you are more than powerful enough to survive there. Do you really want to go that badly?"

There was a 'but' there in somewhere, Ichigo could just feel it. There always was, "What if I did?" Staring intently at the person that was arguably responsible for bestowing most of his more relied upon abilities as a Shinigami upon him, Ichigo endured Yoruichi's own look of purpose in return, "Yoruichi… what if I did? Someone's got to put an end to this?"

And that someone was going to be him? All on his own? The kid had guts, she'd give him that. But this wasn't like storming the Seireitei to retrieve Rukia.

"If you really want to go you should wait until we get word back from the party currently in Hueco Mundo." Yoruichi pawed at the window for Ichigo to open it up for her, "Nelliel has said that she is willing to guide us to Las Noches but she will do nothing more. When they locate the fortress they will probably return, or at least send for more assistance."

As things currently stood, with Nelliel exercising her right to refuse to pick sides she was not an active combatant in this conflict. That left Naruto, Gaara, and Kensei as the only viable combatants on the side of the recon party. Tatsuki was there too, getting some on-the-job training so to speak, but realistically she would only be there to observe. In a real battle she would only be able to do so much, and if she were forced to face an Espada Naruto would be down an apprentice within seconds, no question about it.

"What if I wanted to go now?"

"That's not smart." Yoruichi had to insist and put her foot down in this instance, "When we say that Hueco Mundo is a desert we mean it. There are no landmarks, no way to mark where you've gone and where you're going. And most importantly without someone that can split dimensions like Hidan, Gaara, Naruto, or Nelliel, you won't be able to return home."

From experiments and observations made on their Arrancar allies, Urahara was working on a way for a Shinigami to create a Garganta via Kidou that he was probably going to end up selling to the Seireitei or just using himself. But it wasn't complete yet, and even if it had been, Ichigo had never even tried learning a single Kidou, let alone one as complex and delicate as creating a portal to another dimension. His sheer level of raw power was just too much to establish any kind of base control over.

He started off with far too much Reiryoku to be given the beginner's course that most Shinigami were given. It was like giving full access of a cherry picker to a chimpanzee; it would help the monkey to do its job better than it could have ever imagined, but learning how to control it was a different problem entirely.

Even so, it wasn't like that put going to Hueco Mundo as a full-on impossibility. There were still ways.

Lightbulb meet Ichigo.

"Wait, we can still do that." Ichigo said, "All I need is an Arrancar guide right?"

Yoruichi would have palmed her face had she not been a cat, "Hidan is the only combat-ready Arrancar still here, and I really don't think you're going to be recruiting him to go into the desert part of Hueco Mundo. He'll want to go into the Forest of Menos so he can start killing them again. Nothing he wants is up on the surface."

"No, not him. What about Nel's brothers. Those two guys… what were their names?" Ichigo tried to remember. He wasn't meaning to be rude, he was just seriously drawing a blank on the names of Nel's Fracción, "Penne and Donn-Donn?"

"Pesche and Dondochakka." Yoruichi corrected, "I said _combat ready_ Arrancar. What are those two going to do when you get yourself into a fight?" They weren't helpless newborns, but comparing those two to Ichigo, even without using his Hollow mask, even using only his Shikai, they'd probably still be overmatched, "They aren't even a part of Equilibrium. If Nel finds out you took them she could be angry with you."

"I just need guides, I don't need the help to fight." Ichigo said, holding up his hands defensively, "What are we going to do, wait for someone to attack Karakura Town again?" No, he didn't like that at all. Aizen began all of this, and well over one hundred years ago if he was to believe everything told to him. He was sorry, but he couldn't be like Urahara or Shinji, or even the rest of the Visoreds.

If someone picked a fight with him, well he couldn't help but do what he could to swing back. This would mark the third time that Aizen had taken a shot at them. The first time being during the events of everyone's attempt to rescue Rukia, the second time back during the original establishment of Mother Base, the third time being during the two-pronged attack on the base and on the Rukongai district in the Soul Society.

He was sick of being a soft target being held back by the limitations of the Seireitei.

"Listen… I butt heads with you guys a lot." Ichigo started to explain earnestly, "Usually with the Seireitei's captains. Not so much with you really, but with Geta-Boushi and especially Naruto." He had a bit of a problem with most forms of authority, always so patronizing to those with less experience to them, "Even with all of that though, the thing that I like about you guys that lets me actually take pride in being with the lot of you is that if we think we're doing the right thing you'll let us do it. You let us make our own mistakes and deal with it instead of just telling us what to do and trying to explain why you're right and we're wrong."

In the Soul Society, right and wrong was established in a very narrow system of justice dictated by others that had no on-the-ground knowledge, understanding, or compassion for the reasoning behind anything. If you stepped out of line you paid for it. It was so stuffy and rigid, it was a wonder that they got anything done and it wasn't hard to see how Aizen had curtailed them for over a century with his plotting.

"I'm not even saying what I want to do is a good idea." Ichigo continued to say, "But I think it's what I should do. I don't even need Nel's two brothers as escorts, hell I'll find Naruto, Gaara, Nel, and Kensei if I have to before they leave and go with them."

He just wasn't going to drop it was he? He was going to keep hounding either her or Urahara about it until one of them gave in. She knew it would only be either of those two, because if he did it to Hidan it would either end up in a fight where Hidan still wouldn't open a Garganta for him in the end, or Hidan would get tired of listening to him and open one just to leave Ichigo behind and mock him. And both of those things would only serve to exacerbate the situation farther.

"Fine." Yoruichi grumbled. A small smile actually crossed Ichigo's face and he finally opened the window to his room for her, allowing the black feline to jump up onto the sill, "But if you want even the slightest hope of catching up to them you need to leave tonight! Tie up whatever loose ends you have here and get your ass to the base." She relented before jumping out onto the night street to return back home.

Stupid kid. Why'd she say yes?

Because he'd still probably find a way there even if she didn't and he'd get himself stuck there with absolutely no chance of getting home on his own. At least this way he might wind up getting an escort, or if not he'd be able to somehow find the others and return with them when they were finished.

That was fine. All Ichigo needed or wanted was a small chance. He wasn't going there to be a quiet observer, he was going there to make a splash and cut some chinks into the Arrancar armor if not outright break it. He'd use Kon, tell his dad he was leaving and that would be that.

XxX

(A Short Time Later – Hueco Mundo)

"You did good." Naruto said as he walked through the never-ending sands of the desert world with Tatsuki alongside him wearing a cloak to protect her from the weather, "We need to name that new jutsu of yours too. Unless you want to call it big-fiery-crack-in-the-ground."

"How about Honou no Kakoushou (Vanishing Flame Crater)?" Tatsuki inquired enthusiastically despite her fatigue that she was trying to hide through exuberance, "I was pretty great right? Come on, tell me again how great I was." She preened, finally having done something truly praiseworthy in her own opinion.

While it wasn't good to let his apprentice get a swelled head, Naruto didn't really get openly complimented whenever he managed to pull off a new jutsu around Jiraiya until well after he had learned the Rasengan. The memories were hazy, but they were his fondest times and formative years as a ninja. He wanted Tatsuki to know that what she had done was a big deal, but… "Remember though, she was a lieutenant, but she wasn't fighting with a full deck there."

With a frown, Tatsuki had to concede that point. Had Momo been clearheaded enough to fight using her strength which was clearly her devastating Kidou ability from the start to catch her in a trap the way she almost had to finish the battle, she probably would have won.

Even so, she still handed a lieutenant her butt to her and that was something to hang her hat on if nothing else, "I know. But I had to take advantage of what was in front of me. Besides, if she had been well off enough to fight me at full capacity you wouldn't have let me fight her right?"

Crushing silence was the reply as the only thing Tatsuki could hear in turn was the subtle wind blowing grains of sand about. No Naruto's voice despite the fact that he was right next to her and had clearly heard her speak.

Turning to her side she saw Naruto distinctly trying to ignore her and narrowed her eyes at him, "You wouldn't have let me fight her… right?"

"I… probably still would have." Naruto admitted, not really relishing in the glare he was receiving from the short-haired young lady after hearing his answer, "Don't get all bent out of shape. This isn't one of those 'succeed or die' kind of things like Urahara did with Ichigo. If I thought that you couldn't take Momo as she was I would have jumped in if she trapped you. Kind of like the way she seemed to at the end."

"Why didn't you jump in when she actually trapped me then?"

"You busted out didn't you? Sometimes you need to get thrown down a ravine to get the point of a lesson."

"Why do you keep using getting thrown down cliffs and ravines as a comparison?"

The two continued walking through the eternal wasteland for quite a while longer until from the sand a humanoid figure emerged. It was Gaara in his own rich cream-colored cloak that was a part of his standard attire. His seafoam eyes scanned the two of them and noted how somewhat beaten up Tatsuki looked before he locked eyes with Naruto, "You're both late."

Both of them held a look on their faces as if to ask him why he just rose up from the sand like that was normal or even cool. Neither of them said anything about it though. Calling Gaara on for being odd wasn't really the best way to get any kind of answer from him.

It wasn't as if anyone else had room to talk either, so they just dropped it.

"Took you long enough." The gruff and no nonsense verbiage of Kensei made itself known as he walked up over a dune and sat down on the top in order to take off one of his shoes and pour sand out, "Pick a worse place for someone to wait for you next time why don't you?" Where else would he possibly have wanted to meet? The whole dimension was nothing but desert, "Why does the girl look all beaten up?"

"Because she got beaten up." Naruto answered simply, looking over at Tatsuki who simply gave him a 'who cares' expression. Well look at her trying to play it all cool, "She's fine though. It's not like she'll have to do much else other than keep up anyway."

Ever the attentive to detail, Tatsuki started looking around but was unable to see the last person that was supposed to be there along with them, "Where's Nel?"

"I'm here."

On the other side of Kensei's large hilly sand dune, the grown up Nel sat on another rock looking at the seemingly permanent moon emblazoned in the sky. Apparently Yoruichi had given her some clothes to wear after her transformation back from a child, which made sense given that adult Nelliel seemed to be rather gifted physically.

As everyone made their way toward her sitting place, Naruto decided to make sure this was okay with her. After all, this would probably be a touch more troublesome without her assistance, "Are you sure you're alright with helping us like this?"

"Yes." Nel consented without looking at him, still with the rather wistful and serious expression marking her countenance, "If nothing else, I owe you this for taking such good care of me in my fragile state. I refuse to fight though. If you find yourself in battle it will be on your own. I hope that you can respect this."

It wasn't hard to feel the power from her even though she was clearly trying to hide just how strong she was, but it was her choice, and with all of them there to do the fighting if it came to that point there wasn't any reason to try and coax her away from doing as she wished.

While everyone had been expecting something radically different from the fully healed Nel, what they got was still extremely surprising.

_(Flashback – The Previous Day)_

_Healing Nel's visual scar was the easy part for Orihime. The actual wound itself was rampant with foreign spiritual energy festering around it which was the real problem. A spiritual wound to the mask fragments of an Arrancar? It was no wonder that such damage had been dealt to her energy if that were the case._

_From what looked like it would merely take minutes, the healing process dragged on to an hour, and then somewhat past that. Still, the healer of the group stood fast and continued working diligently until the moment that she felt her powers doing nothing more for her subject, "Ah, I think that's it." Orihime said, blinking herself out of hyper-focus and running the back of her hand across her forehead, "I think I've done everything that I can."_

_By this point Nel had fallen asleep on the floor as Orihime's barrier for her healing ability vanished. There was no longer a scar on her forehead, nor was her mask cracked. But other than that she seemed the same as she had always been._

_In the time that they had all been waiting for Orihime's treatment to finish, Yoruichi had transformed back into her woman form and had dressed herself once more. Naruto and Urahara had gone to have a video conference with Yamamoto to make sure that their next move didn't unintentionally step on the toes of the Seireitei._

_One of them had remained back to watch over what was happening with Orihime and Nel, and Yoruichi had chosen to be the one to do so when Tessai had to return to the shop to check on the recovering Ururu and Jinta. The two child shopkeepers as well as Dondochakka and Pesche were still resting after being healed after being defeated by Harribel the night before._

_After the leak to Nel's energy had been repaired, Yoruichi didn't know what she had been expecting. She at least figured that it would be easier to sense the little Arrancar, but it seemed like nothing had changed underneath the surface throughout the entirety of the healing process, "So after all of that we still-."_

_Anything she was going to say was cut off by powerful Reiryoku bursting from Nel's body. The smaller laboratory that served as Urahara's obligatory base quarters seemed to falling apart due to its intensity. Orihime was afraid that what she had done had forced the little girl to explode of something at first, but that was just grossly inaccurate as to what was happening, "I can't see! What's going on?"_

_Yoruichi's eyes were able to better focus on the figure at the center of the power and was able to make out the movement within, "Her entire body is changing?" And growing. God, she hoped that they hadn't accidentally triggered her Resurrección. Could they even do that? _

_No, she was an Espada. The former Tres Espada. If she had gone into her Resurrección there wouldn't have been any question about it._

_Eventually everything subsided and on the floor lay the new (or old) Nel. An adult. Quite the adult too from the looks of her. And her little burst of power and sudden growth had destroyed the clothes that she had been wearing._

_Best to remedy that problem quickly before either Naruto or Kisuke managed to make it there from the comm. room in case this new Nelliel was modest about her body._

_And with that, Yoruichi walked over and carefully picked Nel up before quickly vacating the room just before the remaining denizens of the building entered the room, with both Naruto and Urahara charging through the door and Gaara appearing in a whirlwind of sand. Hidan just casually sauntered in behind everyone, calmly eating a sandwich._

_And all Orihime could do was laugh sheepishly. It seemed that she had certain events that she needed to explain, "Ah… where should I begin?"_

_Everyone just stared at her until Hidan polished off his sandwich and pointed at the floor behind Orihime, "How about telling us why half-pint's clothes are in scraps all over the room?" He said, drawing attention to the fact that tatters of Nel's previous clothes that had been given to her to wear as a child were now indeed strewn everywhere, "What, did you blow her up or something? I didn't think you had it in you."_

(End Flashback)

That was a very strange evening, and one that Naruto couldn't really stick around to take part in due to his other responsibilities that night, such as managing to actually recruit a Visored for this night's mission. Somehow Urahara had managed to obtain Nelliel's services, and he didn't even want to know how.

"We're not even here to fight." Naruto said to Nel to try and get this show on the road, "It's a scouting mission. We want to see exactly where the Espada are all holed up." Yes, because Aizen was well aware of exactly where everyone else was. Why shouldn't they be able to do the same against him?

"That would be Las Noches. The grand palace of the Hollows." Nel said, getting up from where she was sitting to vanish quickly to a slight distance away where she was looking off without facing them again, "If you really want to find it that badly then you should follow me. This will probably take a while."

Everyone nodded and started following Nel who was not using Sonido to move faster. With that in mind they surmised that this place had to be rather far away, otherwise there wouldn't have been any reason to keep from doing so.

It was soon evident that this was absolutely the reason why, as the minutes dragged on and turned to an hour, and an hour moved to two hours. The only reason they were all certain that they weren't going in circles was because of the fact that Gaara would have known as much, what with his strange connection with the desert and all.

Thank goodness they were all otherworldly conditioned… and Naruto had given Tatsuki a soldier pill when they had first gotten to Hueco Mundo just in case.

As they followed the flowing green hair of the female Arrancar in front of them for an increasingly long amount of time, the first to gripe was Kensei, "I didn't know that there would be all of this running when I signed up for this." He said, shooting a poignant glare Naruto's way, "Your fault."

"Boo hoo princess." Naruto responded in a salty manner, "I almost had to beg you jerks to get just one of you to go. Besides, when was the last time you actually got a real workout?" Seriously, they all hung out in a warehouse all day and night. When in the hell did they ever have to exert any real effort? They had to be even more out of shape than Naruto had been before they had whipped him back into it prior to storming the Seireitei.

"Yesterday!" Kensei insisted sharply. He took great pride in his physique. He worked out constantly and knew for a fact that Naruto had seen him curling dumbbells for several hours straight.

"Lifting your wimpy baby weights doesn't count." Deadpanned Naruto. Seriously, this guy had been a captain. That meant something. Tatsuki wasn't even complaining, "It's only been two hours since we started running. Someone doesn't do cardio."

While Naruto and Kensei took turns razzing each other, Gaara turned his attention to the member of the group that was the same species as him. While he had no problems with someone being quiet, otherwise he would have been a massive hypocrite, there seemed to be something about her that was off.

Despite being as subtle as was his nature to do so, Gaara was still caught looking in Nelliel's direction, "Yes?" She said, deciding to address the situation if indeed there was one, "Is there something bothering you Gaara?"

"Not so much bothering as compelling my interest." He admitted in his usually blank manner, "Why did you agree to assist us? You seemed against such a thing until Hidan and I were asked to leave the room by Urahara-san. What did he do for you to change your stance?"

"He asked me as a personal favor." Nel said before a small smile found its way onto her face, "He took care of my Fracción and watched over me closer than any other, and the children of his shop got hurt trying to protect me. He is the real reason that I chose to do this for you. I owe Kisuke-san immensely."

With a nod to show that he understood, Gaara turned his eyes forward once more, "When you've done this for us, what will you do then? You don't wish to have any part in the conflict between the Seireitei and Aizen's Arrancar Army."

"A Gigai, in the vein of the one worn by you and Hidan." She said succinctly, "This will mask the presence of my Reiatsu enough for me to live in peace with Dondochakka and Pesche in the Human World. It's better than living in Hueco Mundo. Even without the army that has been formed here every single day would just be a constant battle for survival."

"What's it like being a Hollow?"

Both Nel and Gaara turned their heads enough to see that Tatsuki had been the one to ask them the question. With the eyes of both composed Arrancar looking at her she felt self-conscious. After all, everyone else there was bringing something absolutely incredible to the dance. She was really only there to observe and report. Just to learn.

She didn't expect an answer, but she received one from Gaara, "You feel empty, constantly wishing to devour the most potent of souls. It can be of anything around you as long as their spirits are strong. Nothing you take is ever enough for you, you always desire more. You would have been a prime target for even the lowest level of Hollows even before your training."

"That hunger drives many Hollows to become nothing more than mindless beasts. They constantly fight with one another and eat what they manage to kill to take their power for themselves." Nel continued, picking up where Gaara left off. She seemed to detest remembering those days, "Only by obtaining strength does one ever gain the intelligence to prioritize this feeling against other more complex ones. It is a rather miserly existence."

Wow… and humans thought life sucked for most of them.

"I tired of such a life and removed my mask from my face." Gaara explained, "I thought that it would kill me, but it turned me into an Arrancar. The feeling of emptiness faded quite substantially, but it didn't end my battles. So I chose to sleep for at least an entire millennium it seems."

That sounded downright terrible. No wonder every Hollow she had ever come across seemed like the most pissed off creatures in the entire universe.

"Holy shit is that it?"

Hearing Kensei's voice as he seemingly stopped his back and forth with Naruto, everyone turned straight ahead to see a vast fortress standing above the white sands that it matched in color. Numerous massive towers surrounded it closely on the outsides.

It was absolutely colossal.

Everyone stopped in order to take in the sight of the stronghold. It was worth stopping and acknowledging. For sure. Everyone had a thought on it. For Nel it was kind of like some kind of twisted homecoming. For Gaara it seemed like a blight on the vast and beautiful desert around them. Kensei was only thinking about how far inside he would have to go in order to get a shot at obliterating Aizen. Tatsuki wondered how anything like that was built. Naruto just wanted to know why everyone had to have a base the size of a capital city.

"How big is that place?" Tatsuki asked. She couldn't gauge just how far away they were from it or how big it really was. It looked as if it were on the horizon, but that was just too far away to be able to see something so clearly, "Naruto-sensei is this one of those genjutsu things that you tried to tell me about?"

"Uh… no." Naruto said, shading his eyes with his hand so that he could try and figure the distance, "That's real." And now that Naruto had a picture of what exactly the place looked like he could utilize the Gedou to get himself back to that general area, "Should we get closer?"

"It will take two days to reach from here give or take." Nel stated, getting a stunned look from Tatsuki while no one else really seemed surprised about it. They were _far_ away from the grand and imposing structure, "I'll guide you as close as you need me to, but that's it."

Looking around at Gaara, Kensei, and Tatsuki, Naruto tried to get a consensus as to what everyone wanted to do. The desire to continue on seemed unanimous amongst them. So decision was complete.

Press on it was.

XxX

(Elsewhere in Hueco Mundo)

A dimensional tear appeared in the sky and from out of it dropped an orange-haired Shinigami with a massive bandaged sword on his back. Looking back up he saw the figures that had brought him to Hueco Mundo via Garganta. The strange looking Arrancar pair of Dondochakka and Pesche.

"Take care of yourself in there Shinigami kid!" Pesche shouted, waving down to him through the split in time and space, "Remember, if you run past the gigantic white building that's the size of a small city-state you've gone too far! Too far by like three days!"

Dondochakka's larger frame pushed Pesche out of the way so that he could yell down to Ichigo as well, "If you see Neliel-sama make sure she stays safe and returns! She still wants to repay Urahara-san for all he's done don'tcha know!"

"Got it!" Ichigo yelled back up to them. He didn't get the gist of the whole thing, but he understood enough to make sure, "Alright, thanks for the help you guys!"

"Oh! One more thing! Incoming!"

Ichigo paled and quickly dodged before he was smashed by the massive eelish body of Bawabawa. Having just seen his life flash before his eyes, Ichigo turned his ire up toward the open Garganta, "Oi! What the hell was that?" He pointed right at the smiling Hollow animal for emphasis, "Where the hell did he come from? He wasn't with us when we left!"

"He was in my stomach don'tcha know!" Dondochakka explained, "Just don't ask! He knows the way to Las Noches just fine, and he'll get there faster than you would on foot by yourself so just ride him all the way there! Make sure he comes back with you too!"

Pesche muscled his way back into view and waved down at Ichigo happily as the portal closed back up, "Bye Shinigami kid! Don't get eaten by something!"

Before he knew it the sky had closed back up and he was alone in the desert world with a gigantic worm/eel/whatever thing. Turning toward Bawabawa, Ichigo just shrugged and took his sword off of his back before hopping up onto his back, "Well are you ready to go big guy?"

Bawabawa made happy grunting noises before he began to quickly slither his body across the sands like a train.

Chad and Uryuu were probably going to throw a fit once they realized that he went there by himself. Orihime probably would too come to think of it.

And everyone that was already there would probably pop him one when or if he saw them. Well no guts no glory. As Naruto had previously said; the enemy was there, and Ichigo was going to attack them there. If Naruto, Gaara, and Nel raised a ruckus he could probably get in a good chance to do some damage himself.

He already had valuable experience in going up against a massive force almost on his own from when he fought in the Soul Society.

How different from attacking the Seireitei could attacking Las Noches be? At least here he would definitely still have the element of surprise.

XxX

(Las Noches – 5th Tower – Throne Room)

In front of the man in charge, Aizen Sousuke, a hologram depicting the foreign party of five was projected, showing them looking unto Las Noches in the distance before they started up their running again and went toward it.

"How bothersome." Aizen said, though his face didn't reflect his words. It was stuck in the usual satisfied smirk that he constantly had. It was as if nothing ever ruffled him. There was a reason for that as well. The element of surprise was completely nonexistent in his realm. He had long since established complete control over the portion of Hueco Mundo where his fortress was located.

Even if something like this occurred, he would always be aware enough of it to react. It would take a day for them to get close to Las Noches. That was plenty of time for him to dredge up something to deal with them. And they had even been considerate enough to bring Nelliel back. That would save him the trouble of having to go and locate her later. He could have most definitely done without them bringing one of his first failures of Hollowfication in Muguruma Kensei, but what was done was done.

It was just five of them. Four since one could not realistically count the human girl with them as any kind of threat at all. As a matter of fact she was a weakness. Uzumaki Naruto was indeed fond of his apprentice it seemed, but as impressive as she was to destroy Grand Fisher the way that she did without assistance this was no place for her.

She was the soft target of the lot.

And what was this?

Another hologram popped up showing Ichigo riding a gigantic worm Hollow. So he was here too? Why didn't he come with the others and why was he alone?

It didn't matter. It was just another thing that needed to be handled before it became a problem, "Kaname." Aizen called out, and almost immediately the blind, dark-skinned former Shinigami captain appeared right behind his ornate chair, "We have an issue that requires a fine touch. Who do you wish to take with you to handle it?"

As if he could actually see, Tousen's visor covered eyes panned between Ichigo's lone hologram and the one that comprised the actual group. The decision was his was it? Well in that case he knew what he wanted to do, "Allow me to test my new abilities out on Kurosaki Ichigo before turning my attention to the entire group." Tousen requested, "Ulquiorra and Harribel… as well as the Privaron Espada will be able to handle anything else."

If they wouldn't be able to end things themselves, they would fight evenly until something could be done for them. This wasn't some outgoing mission to Karakura Town or to the Soul Society. This was _their_ territory and they would show why one way or another.

Aizen supposed that throwing sheer numbers of his weaker Arrancar fighters at them would only result in losses though, "Very well then. Have them prepare and send out the fodder Hollows to deter them." There was absolutely no chance of any of the plain Hollows to defeat any of them, but they would not be allowed a casual advancement to Las Noches, and by the time they arrived they would be easier for his Espada to fight, "And Yammy?"

"His arm has yet to fully recover as of now. Our healers are still working on him."

"I see. Well when it does I have an assignment for him. Zommari is to go with him."

"Just with Zommari Aizen-sama?"

"Yes… if not I'm afraid he might kill too many of our own during this mission. At least I know that Zommari is quick enough to avoid him just in case."

* * *

**This is going to be the stiffest semester of my entire college career. Only fitting for my final year yeah? I'm certain that within two months I won't be nearly this chipper, but for now I'm filled with a tentative kind of optimism. **

**That's soon going to be kicked out of me, I'm certain of it. Probably by one of you in all actuality because in all honesty you guys are really good at bumming me out. Cynicism is rampant in our society. Bumming me out is really easy too. I'm hard to anger unless I'm already upset, but downing me is appallingly simple. Someone always wants to rain on your parade just because.**

**Oh well., I'm just wasting space now. Until next time, chapter complete. Later folks.**

**Kenchi out.**


	31. The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. Now I personally don't know what I'd do if I had to roam the planet as a ghost until the end of days, but some of the people I know… well, they'd be doing some pretty evil shit. Being dead has to be boring.

**Chapter 31: The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday**

* * *

Ichigo let out a yawn as he sat on the massive back of Bawabawa, the worm-like Hollow pet of Pesche and Dondochakka, whom they had allowed him to borrow for faster transportation across the sands of Hueco Mundo. And thank goodness for that because the world of the Hollows was absolutely huge.

Huge, but oh so crushingly boring.

The novelty of being inside of the home world of the spirit devouring beasts, the Hollows, wore off very quickly once he had been there for long enough. And long enough was longer than 24 hours, as it was now deep within day two.

"Ugh." Ichigo groaned before letting out a forced yawn, "Everything in this goddamn dimension looks the goddamn same." He was now sorely wishing that he had figured to bring someone else. Even hearing Uryuu bitch about the trip and Ichigo's intent in Hueco Mundo would have been better than listening to the wind howl and Bawabawa grunt unintelligibly in response to the things he'd say every now and again.

Still, knowing that there was another living(?) creature around was somewhat reassuring for Ichigo, who was currently holding onto a spirit ribbon that he'd felt out as Naruto's. His was the easiest to locate because aside from Tatsuki's it was the one he was most familiar with currently in Hueco Mundo, and Naruto's Reiatsu signature dwarfed hers on her best day and his worst.

It still didn't stop it from being the dullest thing he'd ever done in his life. All there was to look at was sand dune, sand dune, dead-looking tree with no leaves on it, sand dune, weird dead skeleton, sand dune. And that was it.

He wasn't there for the scenery though. Kurosaki Ichigo was a proactive kind of guy, and he didn't feel the need to sit and wait in the pocket for the enemy to come to him when he knew where to go to pop them in the mouth.

Or cut them with his Zanpakutou in this case.

Hey, he invaded the Seireitei and brought two of its strongest captains down in an effort to save Rukia didn't he? This was kind of like the same thing only he didn't have to worry about escaping safely with someone this time.

He'd trained for all of that time to learn to properly utilize his Hollow mask to augment his powers. Well it was time to put that to use and shove it down Aizen's throat.

Suddenly, Bawabawa stopped moving and started coughing. That wasn't good. Was he sick?

…Did Hollows even get sick?

Either way, Bawabawa was hacking up a storm. So much so that Ichigo jumped off of his back and rested a hand on his side, "What's wrong big guy? Did you swallow too much sand or something?" He stopped his train of thought to jump onto another, "…Do you even eat sand? I remember hearing something about you not being able to live without it."

There was no way for Bawabawa to answer, not until he cleared his throat. Something he did with a mighty set of coughs that allowed him to spit out what seemed to be several heavy metal balls.

While the large Hollow worm took deep breaths now that his airway was cleared, Ichigo gave him a deadpan stare, "You ate gigantic metal balls?" That was just… dumb. Even for an associate of Dondochakka and Pesche, "What the hell?"

At that moment the metal balls began to merge into one and a strange green rune appeared on them before there was a bright flash that blinded Ichigo and Bawabawa. When it cleared and he could see again Ichigo caught sight of someone that he hadn't seen in a while, and someone who's presence he was completely unaware of due to the fact that on his own he couldn't sense their race.

"Koga-san?"

The orange Mohawk and the stubbly beard. The tall, muscular frame. Yes, it was the surviving Bount that had become a member of Equilibrium in the wake of the final battle in Karakura Town. And he had just been spit out by a Hollow worm. Because that was normal and everything.

With a sigh, Koga mulled his metal orb around in the sand before wiping it off on his shirt, "Sorry Dalk." Koga apologized to his Doll for what he had to do to get there. With that done he turned to Ichigo with a stoic look on his face, "Kurosaki-san."

Ichigo just stood pointing between him and Bawabawa, unable to come up with the words that he wanted to say. So he had to settle, "Why?"

"Because Yoruichi-sama requested that I come along to advise you if need be." And she pulled him from an ongoing assignment overlooking the occult in Tokyo for it too. Naruto was going to be pissed when he found out that Yoruichi had done that, but Koga was quite certain she could make him forget if need be.

With a twitching eye, Ichigo palmed his forehead, "I told her I didn't need an escort."

"I'm not an escort, I'm an advisor, like I said." Koga said, still looking at the young man sternly, "You must know just how completely foolish this is, coming to Hueco Mundo alone."

"Maybe." Ichigo said, shifting his Zanpakutou on his back, "About as foolish as plotting to destroy the Seireitei with a handful of Bounts?"

"…"

"…"

"…Let's just get going already."

XxX

(With Naruto's Group – Elsewhere in Hueco Mundo)

Tatsuki had done admirably in regards to keeping pace with the more supernatural warriors than herself. They had been running at a steady pace for a day and it had taken 20 hours for her to finally drop out.

It was one hell of a time for an impromptu test, but as her instructor he had to use the circumstances available to him.

Naruto had no problem scooping his student up piggyback and carrying her the rest of the way though. This entire trip was making him incredibly proud of her. She'd risen to the occasion of coming to terms with the afterlife after seeing the Soul Society, doing battle against a foe that was superior to her in combat capability, and keeping up with people with serious conditioning without complaining once. Even when her legs finally quit on her she didn't say a word.

No one but him stopped for her, and even then all he did was just wordlessly pick her up and carry on, catching up with the others and falling back in step with them. She didn't fight it either. She just nestled her head on his shoulder and shut her eyes.

"You alright sweetheart?" Naruto asked the girl on his back, still running along with Gaara, Nel, and Kensei, "You want to try and get some sleep while we're just moving?"

"No sensei, I'm fine." Tatsuki didn't want to look any weaker in front of all of those people so much stronger than her. She was already towing that line by allowing herself to be carried, but her legs felt too heavy for her to keep up with them any longer, "I could use a bit of a pick-me-up with one of those food pills things though."

"The soldier pills? You took two while we were running." Naruto pointed out, keeping his eyes ahead of them on the image of Las Noches that finally seemed to be getting bigger as they kept running toward it, "Those aren't the kinds of things you want to overdo it on. You'll fry your system for life."

Fry the internal energy system that she'd just learned how to use not even a few months ago? No thanks. She'd wait and rest up the natural way. She hadn't had free use of her chakra for long enough to try pushing what she could do with it yet.

"Are we there yet?" Tatsuki muttered questioningly through the fabric of Naruto's clothes after readjusting her head on his shoulder to get comfortable.

"No." Gaara deadpanned, sort of wishing that he was Tatsuki's sensei too after seeing the rapport develop between her and Naruto. Unfortunately he couldn't teach her most of what made him an awesome shinobi in life, so it wouldn't have been productive.

Stupid Naruto and his stupid Rinnegan which made him uber jutsu compatible. While Gaara had been dead and sleeping as a Hollow he'd probably forgotten more about the ninja arts than he remembered right now.

Speaking of which, "Naruto, what was the last enemy that made you go all out, not counting the Juubi?" Gaara asked with his normal expressionless look on his face.

That question didn't interest just Gaara. Nelliel and Kensei both looked over to the yellow-haired ringleader to see what he would say. He'd fought captains so he was going to say one of them wasn't he?

"I couldn't tell you. Juubi-Sasuke is the only one I trained for until recently. The sole purpose for existing was to keep him back." Naruto said, brow furrowing in thought, "The more power I use the easier it is for him to wake up sooner, and I've had to dig into the coffers more in the last six months than I have since the last time we had our little tiff over the fate of the living world."

Kensei already knew about the cataclysmic being in his belly, the impact of learning such a thing about someone kind of wore down when you then spent the next week tagging in and out of kicking his ass.

But he remembered what the power looked like; sheer colored power covering his entire body, and that Naruto had shown it to them and even used it to fight more of them at once for a time on the first day. He'd actually been handling them all quite well, almost enough to entice Kensei, Shinji, Love, and Rose into respectively busting out Bankai instead of just Shikai and their masks to fight him.

That was until he abruptly cut it off without warning and they started fighting more evenly with him, some of them even getting the better of him in some instances.

"Wait… you're telling me that using the monster's power makes it wake up faster?" Kensei asked with a twitching eye of seething anger. Punching him in the stomach felt appropriate at the moment, "Why the fuck were you training against us with it then?"

"Because I didn't know that was what it was until recently! I practiced it with you because I didn't know if I'd have to use it in the Seireitei or not and I didn't want to go in cold!" Naruto defended loudly before quieting down quickly. Tatsuki was trying to sleep right behind him.

But that was what it was though. He'd had his powwow with Gaara and Hidan about the Juubi, and soon thereafter had come to the conclusion that using the Juubi cloak was like poking at a hibernating bear; there was no guarantee that it'd wake up that easily from such a deep sleep, but it was more than possible to rouse it.

Either way he'd explained his stance. He'd prepared for the worst because he had still been rather unnerved at the prospect of fighting an army of Shinigami at the time. Old superstitions and all that, "If I would have had to keep fighting Yamamoto-jiji I definitely would have had to do it though." Naruto added on in the end, "That old man fights like a prick."

"And when you actually _did_ use it against Szayel Aporro?"

Naruto shrugged, "Me and Hidan'd missed our flight, Wonderboy had me a bit miffed from earlier, and Szayel Aporro or whatever his name used to be was attacking Nel. I was pissed, and he was probably the most convenient and least pitiable target to vent on that I've had in a good long while."

He had been Espada-level strong. He had a small battalion of flunkies to throw at him. He'd been attacking a defenseless little girl under the group's care with intent to kill. That was the trifecta, and thus Naruto had no problems with mincing him up in a hurry. It only took a few moments.

"Thank you for that by the way." Nel commented off-handedly, getting a small salute of a gesture from Naruto in return.

"Yeah, yeah. Hero, blah." Kensei said, irritably squashing down the gratitude going Naruto's way in favor of getting back to their original topic at hand, "How do you even use something like that?"

"Not anywhere in Karakura Town, that's for damn sure." Naruto said under his breath, grinning a bit when he heard Tatsuki snicker on his back under the guise of still trying to sleep.

"I'd hope the fuck not from what you say about it! You could nuke the whole place in one move!"

"Oh stop… you're flattering me."

XxX

(Some Time Later – Soul Society – Seireitei – 1st Division HQ – Captain's Meeting Room)

The entire arrangement of the Gotei 13 captains had been assembled after the fallout of the Arrancar attack on an entire two districts of the Soul Society that had claimed countless lives. In response to the bold movement of clearly declared war, the Seireitei had already dispatched forward teams of Shinigami comprised of members of multiple divisions to keep watch over the various Rukongai districts in the hopes of far faster response time in the future.

"We _still _don't have our own guaranteed way back out of Hueco Mundo yet?" An irritated Soi-Fon asked the resident scientist of the captains, "We can't just keep sitting around and waiting for those treacherous bastards to try another scheme at picking away at us."

"If you're proposing that we send Shinigami into Hueco Mundo without a guaranteed way out…" Kurotsuchi Mayuri said coolly scientific tone of voice, "…Perhaps you would like to volunteer members of your division or of the Onmitsukidou for the one-way trip."

"Or I could cut out the middleman altogether and volunteer myself."

"You and your lieutenant?"

Soi-Fon let out a scoff at the thought of having to take Omaeda Marechiyo with her into Hueco Mundo, "I'd be better off alone." The sound of a sword stabbing into the table attracted attention to a long and extremely weathered Zanpakutou stuck there, and the man sitting there right by it.

"Hell, I'm in." Zaraki Kenpachi said with a rather bloodthirsty grin on his face, yanking his sword back out of the table with a jingle to the bells in his hair, "That sounds like my kind of party."

Of course someone such as him would enjoy being stuck in a realm full of hostile Hollows after his blood. If he had access to Hueco Mundo to and from he'd probably use it as a mandatory vacation spot for the entire 11th Division.

"It's too rash a course of action for the Gotei 13 to take." Unohana Retsu's temperate voice rang out like a bell as she chided Soi-Fon gently, "There is a reason that the Equilibrium group is able to do such things that we are unable to, one would say with a reckless abandon."

"It's not so much reckless abandon as it is a difference in purpose and internal makeup." Shunsui said with a small smile on his face as he lazed in his own seat, "They're not the backbone of any central government, and they have way less lame regulations in what they can do. So they've got advantages in how they can operate. But in the same vein they lack most of the resources that we have, namely manpower for one. It's amazing how they haven't stepped on our toes yet."

"I believe Shihouin-dono and Urahara-san manage to keep Uzumaki-san from doing that." Ukitake said helpfully, "I'm fairly certain he doesn't care if he makes enemies beyond human comprehension judging from the first time he came to the Soul Society." He didn't say anything, but Byakuya's fingers twitched toward his Zanpakutou subtly, "I'd imagine that living for over two-thousand years basically alone does get boring."

"We should ask Yama-jiji about that." Shunsui replied cheekily for him.

Both old friends got a bit of a chuckle out of that until Komamura let out a growl that got them both to show respect once more.

It wasn't a secret in the Seireitei that the canine-headed captain didn't particularly care for Naruto or any of Equilibrium due to the Soul Society infiltration, and the fact that Naruto had fought a rather destructive battle against the captain-commander of the Gotei 13 before a cease-fire had been unofficially arrange with Aizen's defection.

Komamura said nothing though, instead choosing to remain silent, his tall and imposing figure towering in the background. He could see Soi-Fon's point in wanting to actually be the one to press the attack. Her entire sense of identity as a fighter was to strike first hard enough to ensure that the enemy could not get back up.

To have an enemy that could constantly afford to launch strike after strike on two different fronts freely without much fear of repercussions had to be something of an insult to the petite Shinigami captain.

The doors to the meeting room flew open with a thud, heralding the arrival of the head of the Gotei 13 and all eyes and attentions went directly to him without fail. Kenpachi even stood up out of his seat, showing just what he thought of the wizened old man Yamamoto. That he was a man with strength to be respected.

He didn't say a word, slowly taking his time as he walked past everyone standing at attention for him until he reached the head of the room and turned to face them. His eyes passed over the lot of them before almost imperceptibly he nodded as if to open the floor to questions from his captains.

Surprisingly, Komamura was the first to speak, "Yamamoto-sotaichou, I don't understand why we aren't committing any of our own forces to the tasks we have allowed the Equilibrium organization to take. Relying on a fringe group such as that, that has even managed to obtain Substitute Shinigami Kurosaki Ichigo as a member is a dangerous precedent."

The Substitute Shinigami position by itself was already controversial enough.

"There is a reason aside from the apparent capabilities they possess to travel between the realms." Yamamoto said, "I do not trust them, of that I can assure you." How could he? Three of the more prominent members were those that had been banished from the Soul Society in the past, "But when a resource presents itself that has no problems doing battle with your enemy, it is something that should be taken advantage of."

"What if Uzumaki is not what he appears to be?"

He appeared to be an immortal human with abilities lost to time that could match Shinigami captains. As ludicrous as that sounded it was staring them in the face, just as the revelation that the afterlife could routinely interact with the living was staring Naruto in his face. It was all a matter of who adapted to the eye-opener first and figured out what to do about it.

As of now the Seireitei still had more cards to play than he and his did by far, if it ever came to that of course.

"This allows us an opportunity to observe both our enemy and a potential future threat at the same time." Yamamoto reasoned. The more information that could be gathered on both the Arrancar Army and Equilibrium's more unique members without incurring anymore losses of their own, the better. Today's ally could be tomorrow's enemy. As a matter of fact that was what usually occurred.

That group was full of dangerous elements. If they weren't talking about Naruto himself it would be the three former high-ranking members of the Seireitei that were involved as well, and if not them it also had a Substitute Shinigami with incredible power. And the last Substitute Shinigami hadn't particularly worked out so well for any involved party.

But that was looking too far ahead to be considered safe.

"What are we going to do about the Arrancar threat?" Ukitake asked, getting back to the heart of the matter, "First in the Human World, and now the Soul Society. Aizen is staging bolder attacks and stretching our resources thinner and thinner." By now, Aizen probably had a very good idea of just what his forces were capable of up against members of the Gotei 13, and just what he could get away with.

Their response time to threats both in the world of the living and in the Soul Society was now known to him. If he wanted to make a play on Karakura Town for real he probably had all of the information he needed to wage an attack with a heavy margin for success on his part.

Kenpachi's rather bloodthirsty grin left no secrets regarding just what he thought of the entire thing, "Come on. If they all want to fight so bad we should really leave more guys around that want to take them up on that offer. If Karakura Town's what they want, well hell, just send me there. I'll give 'em a warm welcome. I'm itching to get at these so-called 'Espada.'"

"Absolutely not." Yamamoto stated firmly, much to Kenpachi's displeasure, "We need all hands to prepare for a full-scale conflict. I do not have the time to let one of my captains loose on a leisure trip to pick a fight with one or two no-name Arrancar foes. You will have your chance when the real battles begin. Organize your squads. Seated officers will prepare to lead select Shinigami out into districts in the Soul Society in case of another attack. Captains, lieutenants, and all officers 5th seat and above in each division will remain in the Seireitei and will prepare accordingly for war."

XxX

(Hueco Mundo – With Ichigo)

As he continued to get closer to Hueco Mundo, Ichigo's fingers started drumming more and more rapidly on the back of Bawabawa as the sand worm continued to carry him and Koga through the desert. It was easy to see that he was getting a touch restless, even with the reliable transportation.

The fact that there was sandstorm slowly growing in intensity wasn't really helping his mood either. There was sand in his clothes and every time he shook it out more would fly in.

"Are you impatient for combat?" Koga asked, startling Ichigo out of his trance. The man had been silent for hours, "It's said that the calm before a battle is worse than the actual battle itself."

Ichigo smiled wryly at that. Whoever came up with that saying probably hadn't been in too many destructive or brutal encounters before dredging that one up, "It's not really impatience… it's just. Well why is it always easier for guys like Aizen to attack us than it is for us to find them and get one over on them?"

"For the most part we're caught in the position of having to respond, and I know someone like you detests that sort of position." Koga told him. While he wasn't nearly as strong as Ichigo he'd been alive for far longer, and he'd seen and learned a lot about battle, "But you should think about it this way. Aizen Sousuke has had an untold number of years to plan every move he's made thus far. To anticipate every possible response that the Seireitei could make, something that he learned of from right within their ranks at the highest possible level."

And in return anyone that could stop him had only known of these things for a few months.

Yeah. Come to think of it, why were they able to stop anything he did at all?

He knew everything about everybody that could directly step up to fight him. He'd outmaneuvered everyone in the Seireitei so badly he'd basically lapped them all twice-fold. The only Shinigami in exile in Karakura Town that wound up that way by choice was Yoruichi. Urahara, Tessai, and all of the Visoreds had been used and cast aside as scapegoats

Maybe they were just that awesome?

"But he didn't really prepare for any of us did he?" Ichigo said after taking a few minutes to think on what the wiser Koga had told him, "I mean, he probably never knew at all that Geta-boushi had been waiting for him to pull something in Karakura Town. At least not until everything that happened with Rukia and the Hougyoku."

Then again, somehow Aizen had manipulated Rukia being stationed in Karakura Town to begin with. So he didn't know just how much of everything that had happened was by design or just fell into line like that.

But who was really expecting a bunch of Shinigami-elite washouts, a bunch of human kids, some wayward Arrancars, and some weird ultra-old human with archaic powers to be the wild cards that would save the world? Or two worlds actually. Three if one actually believed that Aizen could possibly enter the realm of the Spirit King and take him out.

Gah, all of this thinking was disrupting his concentration on trying to find the others via Naruto's spirit ribbon! This method of tracking others was advanced and difficult enough without looming and oppressive thoughts of why he was there and what this was all for weighing him down. He'd let the people that actually cared about those kinds of things ponder it all. He would locate a problem, seek it out, and kick its ass.

It was always best to stick with what you knew after all.

"Wait. Do you hear that?" Koga asked. All of the latent Reishi in the air that he was unused to stunted his ability to sense for long distances out around him, thus why Ichigo's spirit ribbon use was so valuable here. At first he thought that he was just hearing the wind. But the wind didn't sound like words.

Dropping his full attention off of locating Naruto and the others with him, Ichigo heeded his travelling companion's words and started listening out himself.

"-the wind, stop and become the calm. The sound of warring spears fills the empty castle!"

What the fuck was that, a magic spell incantation? No, that'd be silly. It sounded more like a Kidou. Damn it, it did sound like a Kidou. And looking up into the air, Ichigo got his confirmation of such when he saw a lot of angry yellow building up there.

"Move!" Ichigo shouted, jumping off of Bawabawa before shoving the gigantic sand worm out of the way with a pushing front kick that knocked him yards and yards away. In the same motion, Ichigo turned back around and drew Zangetsu, holding the massive width of the large blade over his head to shield himself when he heard words that told him it was too late to try and escape the blast radius.

"Hadou #63: Raikouhou (Way of Destruction #63: Thunder Roar Sear)!"

A large and concentrated strike of yellow energy bolted down from the sky in the form of a lightning strike, causing a devastating explosion. The result was a massive crater in the sand, but Ichigo remained at the bottom of it, still holding up Zangetsu defensively, only now he was in his Bankai form.

That had hurt. But it would have hurt Koga and Bawabawa far worse. It probably would have killed them.

"That isn't all you've got is it?" Ichigo said lowly as he looked up into the air and caught sight of the figure that had attacked him through the sandstorm. It was hard to see, but it was definitely human in shape. He could only see it for a moment through the shroud of sand flying through the air before it vanished.

On full alert, Ichigo turned and blocked a sword strike that sent him sliding back through the sands. Now he could finally sense the level of Reiatsu from his attacker, and it was extremely powerful. Stronger than a captain's conventional power.

"A situation like this is one I could not overlook." A calm collected voice said that Ichigo vaguely remembered. Through the sandstorm the human figure finally walked close enough for Ichigo to make out the dark skin, long braided purple hair, white uniform and white visor over his eyes, and Zanpakutou of Tousen Kaname.

One of the traitorous captains of the Gotei 13 had come out into the desert looking just for him, "You came out here looking for me? Well doesn't that make me feel special?" Ichigo joked.

Tousen didn't rise to the snide remark however, keeping his almost maddeningly cool countenance in the face of combat, "I oftentimes enjoy walking out into Hueco Mundo during the sandstorms. It is the one time when I feel that the rest of this world is on the same level playing field as me. Sightless. The same goes for you and I right now. The playing field is level… in more ways than one Kurosaki Ichigo."

Ichigo didn't know what he was talking about, but it didn't matter either. He could talk, talk, talk all he wanted to. The fact of the matter was that Ichigo had one of Aizen's treacherous generals right in front of him, and had the opportunity to take him down.

He just had to be able to find him properly in the sandstorm first, as Tousen drifted back and out of Ichigo's clear sight once more.

"I shouldn't say that things are completely even between us though. Even though I cannot see and you cannot see, what I have over you is experience in this avenue." A thought told Ichigo to turn around and luckily he did, as instead of being cut in half he was able to block another attack, "What instinctive reflexes. You're a remarkable spirit."

Getting complimented by a traitor intent on ending life as everyone knew it was not high on Ichigo's list of great things that could happen to him. But he could barely see three feet in front of his face! Sensing where his enemy was happened to be a pretty precise practice when he had his eyes and ears to help, but now he didn't even have that with the storm.

The next time Ichigo honed in on the approaching Tousen and they clashed swords he dug his feet into the sand to keep from sliding away and reached out with one hand to grab onto his collar, getting a good hold of his white uniform, "Heh, I'm done playing hide-and-seek with you." In his Bankai form, there wasn't anything that Tousen could do in a direct test of strength against him.

"Are you now?" Tousen asked, not seeming to mind that Ichigo had a firm grasp on him, "Nake, Suzumushi (Cry, Cricket)." His Zanpakutou began to vibrate fast enough to let out a high-pitched tone that overloaded Ichigo's sense of hearing. It took willpower from the orange-haired teen to remain awake, but he found himself completely disoriented by the sound.

With the chance given to him, Tousen shot one leg directly upward between his and Ichigo's clashing swords and kicked the young man in the face under the chin that snapped his head up and back. It took a moment, but Ichigo rocketed his head forward again through the clash of blades with Tousen and headbutted him, knocking the former captain back, rolling through the sands.

"Yeah!" Ichigo shouted, generating black energy to the tip of his Zanpakutou, "I'm done playing! Getsuga Tenshou (Moon Fang Heaven-Piercer)!" Swinging his sword and letting fly with the blast, large portions of the desert were torn up by the attack until it seemingly hit its mark and exploded in a red-trimmed black blast, "Eyesight is for pussies!" Ichigo shouted over the wind.

Ichigo would have rather gotten a shot at Aizen himself, or even Grimmjow. Ichimaru would have been preferable too, but he couldn't say that he wasn't disappointed at getting to take on Tousen.

Hell, you had to go up the ladder to get to the big boss. If that were the case he'd run the whole gauntlet if he had to in order to take down the Arrancar Army.

"I wouldn't say all of that." Tousen's voice calmly stated as the noise from the blast drifted off into the howling current of the sandstorm, "I should know after all, shouldn't I?" He didn't sound injured at all, "But then again with an attack that has such width to it you didn't need pinpoint aim did you?"

As he walked back into sight, his white uniform was just as pristine as ever and his body looked unscathed, but with one grave exception. His entire left arm was missing just above the elbow. The white sands beneath him were stained with the blood spilling from the injury. So how was he talking as if he weren't hurt at all?

It didn't matter though. What mattered was that Tousen was now a one-armed man in a sword swinging contest.

"You're screwed now." Ichigo said, preparing to put an end to the battle now that his opponent was injured. He wasn't going to let him release his Zanpakutou no matter what he had to do. Dashing forward, Ichigo swung at Tousen only for him to move back in a burst of speed. He was still healthy enough to dodge so smoothly?

Reappearing a few feet back, Tousen's Zanpakutou stabbed into the sand and his lone existing hand was up in front of his face, concealing his features from view, "I don't think so. You see, all of your power, you merely stumble upon it. Luck into it. That's no justice as far as I'm concerned. I on the other hand have worked tirelessly. I have driven myself toward Aizen-sama's cause, and finally he has gifted me with what you've never deserved. Power transcending that of a Shinigami."

As he drew his hand down his face and Ichigo felt a spike of Reiatsu that was a mixture between Shinigami and something else, he couldn't hide the surprise from his face.

Because sitting on Tousen's face was a pure white mask covering his entire head and neck, leaving only a hole for his hair to flow out of the back of it. It had a vertical line going down the middle and nothing else. A solid white chest plate with shoulder guards sporting single similar lines to the one on his mask sat on his body.

And just like that with a short extension of his power, Tousen's missing arm grew back. Regenerating as if he had never lost it to begin with.

"Hollow powers!" Ichigo cried out in complete surprise. Those weren't Visored or Arrancar abilities. They couldn't regenerate on the spot. Only a Hollow could do that, "What did you-? How did you-? What is this?"

"I've already told you." Tousen said, flexing out the newly re-grown fingers on his hand experimentally, "The powers that you've somehow lucked into I was rewarded with for my service as Aizen-sama's loyal sword. The powers of both a Shinigami and a Hollow are in my possession in their entirety as you can see. Those with a strong enough belief in enforcing justice can make sure it comes through for them."

"You call what you've done since you left the Soul Society justice?" Ichigo asked, quickly getting over his opponent's new powers. People learned how to do new things all the time. All he had to do was adapt and overcome, "You killed thousands of souls in the Rukongai! You're about to try and kill an entire city! 100,000 people! For what? To make some self-righteous blowhard a key to 'God' or the 'Spirit King' or whatever the hell you want to call the guy! You really are blind aren't you? And I'm not even talking about your actual sight!"

"The words of someone that has never seen just what miscarriages of justice are possible in this world of ours." Tousen smoothly picked his Zanpakutou back up and Shunpoed out of view without a trace of warning before he wound up right behind Ichigo, sword poised to stab through him.

Ichigo didn't even have the time to gasp in surprise at the enhancement to Tousen's physical capabilities. It was like his own Hollow mask… only not like it at all, 'It's like he's moving in a completely different way now!'

"But then again, Justice is not something that you can express in words."

Instead of the sound of a sword sliding through flesh and organ, the sound of steel hitting steel echoed out. Standing between Tousen and Ichigo was a metal woman with blades for arms and a rather flirty look on her face, **"Wow. My lucky day. Stuck between two handsome men. I guess this is Koga making it up to me for that thing with the sand worm."**

"…Dalk?" Ichigo said confusedly before remembering that Bawabawa and Koga were still around there somewhere.

"Hm." Tousen said to himself as he found his Zanpakutou in contact with the doll of a Bount instead of the body of a Shinigami, "I can't sense your Reiatsu. It's as if you have no Reiryoku at all. If I were an ordinary blind man you possibly could have stricken out at me with a measure of success. Your master hiding from me is the most intelligent thing I can think of however if being a moving shield is the best he can do for Kurosaki. Even if I cannot destroy you, I doubt he is nearly as hard to break. Well… him or your mode of transportation."

Ichigo's eyes widened and he felt out for Bawabawa's energy signature, clearly picking it up. The big lug might as well have been a lighthouse on a foggy coast, "Your fight's with me!" Ichigo shouted, swinging at Tousen only to miss.

"My fight is with any obstacle that stands in the way of Aizen-sama's success." Tousen said before using Shunpo to get a jump on heading towards Bawabawa. Stranding Ichigo in the desert on foot would be a fitting fate for him, "Hadou #54: Haien (Way of Destruction #54: Abolishing Flames)!"

"N**o!"**

As a purple oblong disk of spiritual energy flew from Tousen's hand off where he could sense Bawabawa, Ichigo blurred out of sight while drawing his left hand across his face. Off in the sandstorm the purple light from the Kidou could be seen until it inexplicably split into two separate parts. They flew off in different directions and blew up with the force of blockbuster-level bombs, incinerating everything caught within them into nothing. Not even ash remained.

All Tousen did was scoff and hold up his Zanpakutou as if he were expecting something.

He was not disappointed when it seemed as if the sandstorm had subsided temporarily. But that simply wasn't the case. It was all a matter of Ichigo's power exploding from his body and redirecting the very sand and wind in the air itself away from him upon its release.

If Tousen could see it would have given him a very clear view of what had changed about Ichigo's appearance to go with the intensity of his Reiatsu.

On his face was a white mask with fierce red demonic markings. Through the eyeholes Ichigo's eyes were yellow with black sclera, making for one intimidating staredown that Tousen was getting full-force.

"**Now…"** Ichigo said in his Hollow-warped voice, **"Koga, get Dalk and Bawabawa and stay out of the way. He'll just try to kill you and call it some kind of justice. I don't need to be any more pissed off than I already am."**

"Once again mocking my ideals of justice? How ignorant." Tousen said, not fazed by the turn of events. In all honesty he had been expecting Ichigo to break out the Hollow powers any second. He'd actually been wondering why he'd been waiting for so long. Trying to save something in the tank for later perhaps, "You're just a child, even by the standards of humans. What would you know about the real world?"

"**Someone I know said that one person's justice isn't another person's justice. So don't go around and pimp yours like it's the gospel."** Ichigo replied, **"All it is, is just your own goals and rhetoric. You're wasting your breath spewing that crap at me. As far as I'm concerned you're just another guy with a self-serving gripe, and that part's actually okay, even if this is how you're trying to pull it all off. If you'd just admit that without hiding behind the justice stuff I'd probably show you some respect."**

Ichigo knew a lot of people that he would readily categorize as 'douche,' such as several captains and lieutenants in the Gotei 13, or Urahara Kisuke, Hidan, Hirako Shinji and some of the Visoreds, and Uzumaki Naruto. But at least they didn't make excuses or act like they were doing the right thing all of the time.

Tousen walked around talking about justice and what was right, but could turn right around and be okay with Yammy and Grimmjow eradicating an entire city's worth of souls in the Soul Society. Noncombatants all of them. And just so long as he got what he wanted he could try and justify it.

At least when the Gotei 13 did screwed up things with the Quincies, the Mod Souls, and the Bounts they didn't try to make themselves out to be the good guys. There weren't good guys in most of these things. There was just the offending side or the offended side. Pick one and deal with it. All Ichigo wanted was to make sure the people close to him didn't have to pay for being on one of those sides. That was it.

One by one, all of the conspirators that had started all of this were going to have to fall for this to end. If he had to start with Tousen Kaname, so be it. Hollow powers or not, former Shinigami captain or not, it didn't matter.

XxX

(With Naruto's Group)

As one with the desert so to speak, Gaara could feel anything that he truly endeavored to reach out and locate in Hueco Mundo. If he wanted to find something, there was absolutely nothing that could hide from him as long as it was in contact with sand.

A temporary stop within close proximity to one of multiple little outpost buildings a short distance away from Las Noches allowed for Gaara to sense through the sand. It was then that he felt Ichigo's energy far, far away and in conflict with another powerful source. Captain-level, and it wasn't even at its limit yet.

Ichigo was using his mask already.

A hand rested on Gaara's shoulder, turning out to be Naruto's, "What do you got?"

"Ichigo is here and is fighting one of the Shinigami defectors. Koga is with him." He could feel just how hard Naruto hit his face by palming it. Obviously he was not pleased, "Shall we abort the mission?"

"No…" Naruto said, thinking things over, "Wonderboy knows the drill. We can't treat him like he's ten and powerless. You know what they say about the next generation and all that." He could probably take on any of them. Being gifted with the powers of death gods and the monsters that are their sworn enemies would do that for someone, "The only reason I didn't take him with us in the first place was because I wanted him back in Karakura Town in case something happened there again."

Ichigo could take care of himself. He'd thrown that kid to the wolves in the training with Shinji and the others, and even though Ichigo would still spend random minutes of time every so often, just staring at Naruto as if he were pondering ways to enact some sort of vengeance, it didn't change the fact that if Ichigo had been a bad man beforehand he was even more so now.

So yes, he'd be fine barring some sort of catastrophic shit-storm occurrence, but those usually came one at a time. Naruto hadn't filled his own quota for messed up things happening to him at inopportune times for the decade yet, thus he was feeling that it would happen to his merry little band before anything else.

"Two hours is enough time to wait." Gaara said, standing up from where he had been sticking his arm in the sand, "I elect we continue. The structure is too vast for me to get a good feel of what to expect from attacking it without a closer look."

"Fine." Naruto said, heading back into the temporarily commandeered outpost building. Kensei was sitting in the corner resting his eyes. Tatsuki was sawing logs on the floor using her own arms as a pillow. Neliel was just staring out the window at Hueco Mundo, "It's about time to get going again. This time we're not stopping until we get to Las Noches."

"I won't go any farther." Nel said, never taking her eyes off of the stronghold of those that she used to call her allies, "I told you that I would guide you to Las Noches, but this is closer than I had ever intended to go."

Fair enough.

Naruto wasn't in the business of trying to forcefully recruit someone that wasn't interested… except for Hidan. But that was different. Nel had wound up in the Human World due to an oversight on his part, and she had never been intended to fight. If she wanted to stay out of it all and remain neutral good luck to her.

Kensei was awake enough to hear all of that and let out a scoff before standing up and walking out to stretch his muscles back out. If the girl didn't want to get involved that was her business. He definitely didn't need her around if she wasn't going to contribute.

"Ass…" Naruto muttered as Kensei moved past him, getting flipped off over the man's shoulder for his trouble. That aside, he turned his attention back to Nel as he got down to gently rouse Tatsuki, "What are you going to do then if you're not going any further?"

"I'm returning to the Human World with you once you're finished to get my Gigai and my Fracción from Kisuke-san." Nel admitted, "From there we'll probably never cross paths again. That's the hope at least. Until that point I suppose this is as good a place as any to wait." She put on a small smile despite herself when Naruto rolled Tatsuki over in his bid to wake her up and wound up getting punched in the face.

"You sure?" Naruto asked once more as he rubbed at his jaw where Tatsuki had hit him, "You don't want to go back just one more time for old time's sake?"

"There's no reason." Nel said with a shake of her head before turning her attention to Tatsuki who was still completely out of it, "She's a very special human girl, but that's still just all she is though; human. This isn't the kind of situation she should be placed in."

"It was her choice. She didn't want to be the only one of her friends left out." Naruto explained, still trying to wake the stubborn girl up. Did she usually sleep that hard when she got home after training? This was absurd, "And what are you talking about? I'm human. Chad and Orihime are human. Uryuu's human."

"That's an entirely different thing altogether. From what I've learned, exposure to the Hougyoku in Kuchiki Rukia's body and the unstable Reiatsu from Kurosaki Ichigo's body led to the manifestation of their powers, all except Ishida Uryuu's of course." Nel pointed to Tatsuki for emphasis, "But her. She's got none of that. If it weren't for what you've had her do she'd be nothing like them."

Naruto opened his mouth to defend Tatsuki's potential and say that she'd grown in leaps and bounds in mere months with no end to it in sight, but then he contemplated what Nel had just gotten through saying.

With that he thought things through quite thoroughly before speaking again, "You want to know why she didn't manifest powers like the rest of them?" He said, stroking Tatsuki's hair carefully.

"You know why?" Nel asked with a tilt of her head.

Naruto nodded, idly continuing to lavish attention on his student, "Before any of this ever started she trained herself in the martial arts hard. Every day she trained since she was a little girl. She's technically better than most people I've ever seen when it comes to hand-to-hand. Her physical energies were already monstrously high. Then hanging around with Ichigo's Reiatsu spilling out all of the time like a gas leak pumped up her spiritual energy."

"That doesn't explain anything yet."

Naruto smiled and clasped both of his hands together, "That's chakra. Physical and spiritual energies combined in the body. Ki and Reiryoku." Nel was still lost but listened anyway as Naruto stroked Tatsuki's hair again, "Everyone else's spiritual energy got jacked up so high as opposed to what their ki had been that it warped something in them. Even for Chad. He was strong, but that was all natural. When it came to her, the boost of Reiryoku just extended to match her ki since it had already been so huge. Both were just about even, sky-high, and that's what gave her such badass reserves."

As far as Naruto wasn't concerned, Tatsuki wasn't just special. She wasn't just one in a million. She was more than that! She was more than once in a lifetime, she was once in _his_ lifetime, and that was saying something! He hadn't felt anyone with chakra like hers since the age of ninjas ended in the ultimate bang with him as the last man standing!

Sure, there had been some with a bit of a spark. But this… this was something special.

For all intents and purposes she was a goddamned national treasure. And her potential was boundless.

"If there is nothing else I know how to do as a teacher…" Naruto started to say, looking up and staring Nelliel dead in the eyes, "I know how to take what you're good at and work it until it covers _everything else _that you could be bad at. She seems like she'd suck at illusions, and that's fine because I do too. So why go there? Screw it. By the time we're done she's going to be the baddest ninjutsu specialist in the world behind yours truly. I'm talking a jutsu to match any Shinigami's Kidou, taijutsu that can bust even an Espada's Hierro. She'll be the strongest ninja in millennia."

At this point he was standing up, fists clenched tightly and the presence of his own power radiating off of his body like heat from a furnace. On the floor, Tatsuki had been awake since Naruto had been talking about chakra, and her cheeks couldn't have been any redder from embarrassment.

"-But if she doesn't wake her cute little ass up so we can keep going I'm going to bust it when we get back to base." Running through the desert world of the Hollows followed by a training session that would better be described as punishment? The prospect of that got Tatsuki to jump up to her feet and stand at attention, "That's better. Did you sleep well?"

"No. It's a floor." Tatsuki groused, eyes searching the ground so that she didn't have to meet those of her sensei, "So when we get there, what do you want me to do Naruto-sensei?"

"I want you to watch and pay attention. That's all." Naruto said with a shrug, "I'm not going to force you to do something I don't think you're ready for." Right, like picking a fight with a Shinigami lieutenant? "And no matter what you're never to be by yourself. Unless you have any complaints?"

No… no. This mission had given her enough tests to let her know where she stood. Fighting an emotionally unstable lieutenant and running for longer than any other human being could bear without their heart bursting in hostile territory was more than plenty.

Complaints weren't the problem.

The problem was the movement of Gaara's and Kensei's energy signatures away from the safehouse. Gaara would never let that happen, unless he sensed something close and felt the need to intervene before whatever it was found them.

But someone like Gaara could. And Naruto felt his energy move away from being just outside with Kensei going along with him. Taking a deep breath he began to take in the latent energy around him to reach out and more accurately feel what was going on around him. Upon doing so he could readily acknowledge that the plans had just changed. Observing and reporting on Las Noches and its potential weak points was not the priority any longer.

'This is worse than trying to get into the Seireitei and fight the Gotei 13.' Naruto thought to himself before getting fed up with his enemy seeming to have the drop on his side all the time. With a growl to himself, Naruto walked outside with purpose in his eyes that turned Rinnegan in appearance as he walked up a rather tall sand dune to get a good view of Hueco Mundo still miles away, "Okay. Plan B."

Going outside to follow him, Nel and Tatsuki stood behind Naruto to watch what he was going to do. Nel raised an eyebrow at the visible flaring of Naruto's chakra, until it started to turn dark in color instead of blue. After a moment of observing he seemed to think better of it and went back to normal before Nel herself could reach out and stop him, "What are you doing?"

"I was going to pull some extra power to do something, but I can't level that thing from the outside." Naruto said to himself despite the fact that he was heard, "It's the size of a whole city-state, and it's reinforced. I doubt it's sekki-sekki like the Seireitei, but that's not the point. The meteorite technique can't summon anything big enough to smoke that place in one move with the roof there to take the impact first."

"A meteor?" Nel couldn't keep the surprise off of her face and Tatsuki fell to her knees in the sand out of pure shock and awe. Naruto didn't lie, especially to her. If he said that he absolutely meant it.

"Meteor_ite_ actually. Sorry. It wouldn't take the whole thing since it's still the size of a city and it's covered entirely, but if my aim was on I could land it right through the center of that roof where those towers are sticking out." That'd still probably kill anything that got caught underneath, or anything in the towers, but anyone that was actually strong would survive. The drain of chakra simply was not worth it if it wasn't going to do anything important.

Adding on to the fact that he'd have to use a major chunk of it from the Juubi's supply to get the potency of his chakra strong enough to attract a meteorite to begin with. And for his _real_ big gun jutsu he'd definitely be poking the sleeping Juubi-Sasuke right in the eye with a pointy stick. He hadn't had to pull a Bijudama since the last time he'd fought him.

"You say that as if it's any less ludicrous. You're a human. That's a power reserved more for a Shinigami captain's Bankai, or a top-level Espada's Resurrección."

"Whatever you say." Naruto said with a roll of his Rinnegan eyes. If she really wanted to keep thinking that way she could. He didn't have anything to prove to her, "I'm not Criss Angel, here to mind-freak you for my own amusement."

"Why haven't you shown that kind of destructive power sooner then?" Nel would acknowledge that Naruto was powerful in combat, but not like that from what she'd seen in her child form. The things he spoke of were absurd by any creature's standards of possibility.

"When would I have justified doing ANYTHING like that? Using a Rasenshuriken in Karakura Town was stupid enough by itself, and that's not even the most destructive jutsu I've got!" Arguing over just what a human being was capable of doing against was not his idea of being productive, "I'd shoot a Bijudama at Las Noches just to show you up, but I don't want to risk waking up the killer world-ending demon in my belly without a damn good reason for it."

Blowing away half of the entire exterior fortress wall would have had her jaw hitting the sand quite solidly. But it wouldn't kill Aizen or bring the fortress down in its entirety, so it wasn't worth it.

The argument would have continued had they not been joined in progress by someone that they were both familiar with to a varying extent. The moment they felt the movement nearby they turned out and stared to the figure standing out on the sand just observing them.

Calculating green eyes stared out over the elevated collar of her quite revealing Arrancar uniform jacket.

"Oh." Naruto said, bringing his dispute over his capabilities with Nel to an end, "Well if it isn't the new princess of the Arrancar Army." He said with his arms crossed over his chest, "I made a mistake. I felt Gaara going to someone that was trying to hide a lot of power and thought it might have been you."

"You were indeed mistaken." Harribel said, looking over to Nelliel, "So you have chosen to side with them."

"No. I'm with no one. I'm simply repaying a debt by showing them to Las Noches." Nel said levelly, "A debt that has been paid. I'm not going any farther and I'm not fighting no matter what. I refuse to participate in something like this. There's no reason for it."

"I'm afraid Aizen-sama was quite clear with what he needed from you." Harribel seemed to say with some regret in her voice, "Refusing to fight was fine. But now you're assisting the enemy. There is no happy medium to be had here."

It was either stand with him or stand against him. He created her more or less, and could not risk her power falling into the hands of anyone else, even if she was intent on staying out.

So it seemed as if they were at an impasse again. Nel wouldn't fight, but she was now assisting the enemy. Harribel didn't want to fight, but she had her duties and Nel was a security risk. Naruto had no problems with Harribel, but he was not about to let her attack someone that he was working a deal with, especially since Nel would not fight back unless it was absolutely necessary.

Harribel's eyes turned toward Naruto as she seemed to stare him down. Observing him and analyzing everything she could see and sense. His energy was fluctuating wildly. Wilder than it had been when they had first met. Something was making his power unstable, something that hadn't been a factor during their first run-in.

She then looked upon the human girl that was there with him, behind him on her knees in the sand, probably feeling like a child in a room full of towering adults. And just like that Tatsuki felt herself beginning to be crushed under the spiritual force of her Reiatsu. It was as if the air were being stolen from her very lungs.

"Hey!" Naruto snapped, suddenly breaking the effect of the psychological warfare on his apprentice, "I didn't think someone like you would try to bully someone that much weaker than you that didn't want to fight. If you want to force your will on somebody, aim it at me. I'm the reason Nel's here."

"…Very well then." She said, shutting her eyes before reaching for the sword on her back, but before she could draw it, Naruto was already directly in her face with a fist drawn back that rocketed forward to strike her, "Don't insult me."

With Sonido she avoided Naruto's punch. Or she thought she did, because upon moving Naruto kept pace right with her, an orange pigment at the edge of his eyes to signify something special. Sage Mode and Rinnegan to help him anticipate her movements with her Reiryoku trail, and Swift Release to keep pace with the moves as best as he could. Keeping up with her Sonido wasn't an issue here.

"I'm not playing games with you." He said before landing a punch straight to the chest that sent her flying back and obliterating a sand dune with her body. Looking down at his hand, Naruto noted that it had bloody scrapes on it as if he had been rubbing his fist against a brick, 'That Hierro is no joke. I've never punched an Espada before.'

Ichigo reported breaking his hand punching Yammy in the face the other day, and he was just the 10th Espada. Soi-Fon had to work quite hard just to wound Grimmjow and he was the 6th. So what was he going to have to do to damage the 3rd?

"I already told you not to insult me." Harribel said as she got up looking absolutely no worse for wear following the hit she had taken, "The gap between an Espada and another of a lower number is vast. Defeating Szayel Aporro Granz means nothing when it comes to fighting me. Using the advantages given by fighting inside of our fortress he was barely ranked number 8. Outside of Las Noches he could hardly be considered an Espada to begin with."

Naruto had kind of figured that when it had barely taken one move to defeat him.

"I'm disappointed in you if that is what you're willing to put up against me to show." Harribel said, her sword drawn and hanging from her hand at her side, "I had hoped that you would be willing to show me just what you meant when we had first met in the Forest of Menos."

"I'd rather not have to show you just what sacrifice really is supposed to be." Naruto said before taking a deep breath, "I don't think I can like this. But you're not going to back off either. So I guess fighting you is all I can do." Naruto looked over at Nel and shot a quick glance to Tatsuki, letting her know that she was to make sure that she was a safe distance away if Nel wasn't going to help him.

By the time he turned back to Harribel he had already heard the telltale sound of Sonido moving past him. Nel was already gone and so was Tatsuki.

Harribel attacked him head-on and tried to overwhelm him with her Zanpakutou. Naruto didn't even bother trying to waste time drawing the Raijin no Ken and instead focused on avoiding her attacks. She had a high level of skill with a sword, and any lapse in his concentration would probably end with him bleeding on the ground somehow.

Deciding to create an opening, Naruto ducked low and spun in a 360 degree turn with his leg extended for a sweep that Harribel avoided by flying. The length of the attack however, extended fifteen yards away from the tip of his shoe, creating a wide circle around his entire body.

That would have landed even if she'd managed to move back, and taking to the air was the only option she had available to her. She had to admit that she'd never thought of such a thing, 'He doesn't have to touch me to actually land a blow against me.'

Sure, it might have been fifteen yards or so this time, but she'd estimate that he could control just how far and wide his physical attacks could extend on any given move he made.

"You control your power so well." Naruto said to her now that they were alone, "It'd be hard to believe that you were the third strongest Espada if I didn't know full well that you can't judge a book by its cover." As if responding to what he'd just said, she unleashed an overwhelming amount of spiritual power. A blinding yellow surrounded her, bright and strong enough that he wouldn't have doubted that she could be seen from miles away.

That was more like it. And she wasn't using her Resurrección yet.

"You haven't even begun to see the extent of my power."

"I think… for once, I'm going to have to say 'screw it' about the whole Juubi thing and be irresponsible."

Because if he died due to pulling his punches against an awesome opponent here he'd wind up dooming everything anyway.

* * *

**What's up everybody? Feeling good I hope. **

**Life is done kidney-punching me for a few weeks so I've got a little time to burn until I get set for my final semester, and then life begins in earnest. Not looking forward to that, I'll be quite honest, but unless you've got a trust fund or something you rarely ever do.**

**I don't have any right to make you read this part, so I'll just hope you enjoyed and I'll see you again next time hopefully.**

**Kenchi out. **


	32. Rules of Nature

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. If I did I would have done more work with the settings in regard to Bleach. I mean, I know later on when single swings of swords can obliterate halves of cities it doesn't really matter what the properties of their settings are since it's all getting turned to rubble anyway, but still I believe my point stands.

**Chapter 32: Rules of Nature**

* * *

In Karakura Town, Shihouin Yoruichi was quite bored. In Naruto's absence she was more or less the next up to run Equilibrium, but there wasn't much of anything for her to do outside of preparing herself and the others for combat.

The other younger members of the group, Uryuu, Chad, and Orihime were training themselves and they really didn't need her help, not that she could help with their respective powers.

She wished that Orihime would focus more on learning practical combat techniques aside from defensive and healing ones, but you couldn't turn a lamb into an aggressive, effective killer. She was making massive strides in that department if nothing else.

Urahara was busy working on… something that was supposed to be important for later along with Tessai and his child helpers Ururu and Jinta, so this left Yoruichi generally all by herself.

Hidan was around, but with him it was kind of better to not think about what he did with his free time. Whatever it was involved a lot of loud death metal.

"…Should've gone to the Seireitei with Naruto and Tatsuki." Yoruichi mused to herself, lounging around in the bed of Naruto's quarters, "At least I could have done something useful involving the Soul Society even though I'm not on this mission."

She was in human form and was of course not wearing clothes. For what reason would she find the need to? She was in her boyfriend's room, where no one else ever went and no one else could really access without his permission.

And she sincerely doubted that Naruto would be averse in the slightest to knowing that she was naked in his room. He was usually rather enthusiastic about it and when they were 'together' they rarely went into her room.

To her surprise a knock came to the main door. Deciding to be silent and see if they would go away, she quit it when another knock came, realizing that most people around the base could sense her Reiatsu since she hadn't been actively hiding it.

With a sigh she got up and went all the way to the front door of Naruto's quarters, opening it up for Uryuu to get a glimpse of her from the other side. She could have sworn that along with his face reddening, his glasses began to fog up. Aww, that was adorable, "Uryuu. What can I do for you?"

"P-Put some clothes on first of all." Trying to maintain his intellectual, unflappable demeanor was simply not in the cards, no matter how hard he tried.

"No." Yoruichi said, quite amused by his reaction. It wasn't as animated as Ichigo's always served to be, but it was something, "I am firmly within the barrier of my lover's living quarters. I wear clothes everywhere else around Mother Base when I'm not in cat form, so you should thank me for that. Now what do you need?"

"It's a legitimately serious conversation."

"Then come in."

"Not while you're like that!"

Rolling her eyes, Yoruichi shapeshifted into her black cat form and spoke to let Uryuu hear her now deeper voice to inform him that she had transformed, "You can stop doing your best impression of a tomato. Now if I have to ask you again I'll assume you want training and my first course of action would be to spar."

In other words, she'd take him down to the training room and subsequently take him to the woodshed.

Adjusting his glasses on his nose to save some face, Uryuu entered the room and watched Yoruichi hop up onto a cushy chair to relax on for the duration of the conversation. The Quincy youth decided that in order to get straight to the point of what he wanted, he had to be direct, "I want to offer resignation from Equilibrium."

Yoruichi was only slightly surprised, if only because Yoruichi knew that it wasn't because of anyone that was actually part of the group. She could guess as to why he felt this way, "You have a problem with being officially attached to us due to the connection to the Seireitei."

"I can't take orders from a group that works at the request of the Shinigami." The bespectacled young man said, "I was willing to let the past be the past in regards to what happened to my race, but it's easier said than done when I have their cloud hanging over my head every day. And I'm grateful for Orihime restoring my powers, but by the pride of the Quincy, I can't defer to the Gotei 13."

Waiting for him to finish, Yoruichi just observed him closely before getting down off of the chair and heading back to Naruto's bedroom again, grumbling to herself. Uryuu felt a great release of spiritual energy from the back and Yoruichi came back out with a robe on so that she didn't fluster Uryuu with her lady parts again, "…Alright, I'm certain we've said this already, but there is no connection between us to the Seireitei."

"Equilibrium is taking missions for them."

"We've taken some missions. Missions that we were going to do anyway." Yoruichi explained, arms crossed over her chest, "Because we have a common enemy, I convinced Naruto to bilk some resources out of the Seireitei. If you paid attention or were present for any meetings, Naruto _never_ said we were with them or for them."

"You, Urahara-san, Tessai-san." Uryuu said, listing names, "And Ichigo. All of you have affiliation with the Gotei 13."

"We _used to be_ affiliated with the Gotei 13, and we were exiled. And if you're talking about Ichigo's Substitute Shinigami status, how many times has that title actually come into play?" One reason Naruto wanted Ichigo to be a member was so Ichigo didn't wean dependence on the Seireitei. If he had his own support group and resources, he wouldn't be put in a position where he'd have to defer to them.

He'd have to defer to Naruto, at least until he could match him blow for blow since Naruto was the kind of boss that was more than willing to fistfight with an employee to assert his alpha status. But if Ichigo wanted to go his own way, Naruto would let him go once he proved that he could.

With that explained, Yoruichi continued, "When this was set up, Naruto truly did mean what he said. Balance. Have you noticed the way he treats the Arrancar as proof? Nel, Dondochakka, and Pesche? Hidan and Gaara? He doesn't destroy Arrancars for the sake of their being Hollows. He fights them because they're agents of Aizen that are looking to destroy existence."

That didn't explain Hidan though. Hidan only fought for the sake of killing, but he was an equal-opportunity killer. It didn't particularly matter to him who he was tearing asunder, so Naruto tended to use that by pointing him in the direction of the enemy.

As well as sending him into the Forest of Menos when he was really spoiling for a fight. There were plenty of feral Hollows willing to give him a free battle to the death.

Yoruichi walked over to Naruto's desk and opened a drawer to pull out and drop at least a dozen files on the table, "Missions sent to us from around the Soul Society, not just the Seireitei, under review for more peaceful moments." The ones that hadn't been flat-out refused and burned on the spot at least, "We don't work for the Seireitei."

"And if the Seireitei ever became an enemy again?"

"If you think he's afraid of fighting the Gotei 13 again, feel free to say that to his face when he gets back. I'm sure he'll only laugh at you for five minutes and _maybe_ kick you through a few walls."

The man had already seen the world as he knew it basically end once. If there was anything that would possibly cause a sequel to that, there probably wasn't any enemy that he couldn't steel himself to fight to the bitter end against, especially an organization of warriors that he'd only known for less than a year.

"So is that settled?" Yoruichi asked, sitting on the front of the desk with one leg crossed over the other, "Would you like to finish reviewing these missions yourself and take one to see that we really don't take any marching orders from anyone else?"

"…How'd you get missions from the Soul Society to here if they didn't come from-?"

"Kuukaku."

"Oh."

"Any other questions or concerns?"

"…No. Thank you."

"Any time Uryuu."

XxX

(Meanwhile – Hueco Mundo)

The feeling of Harribel forcefully releasing her Reiatsu as a show of force buckled Tatsuki's knees in the midst of her retreat from the scene of the battle between her teacher and the 3rd Espada. Her balance momentarily compromised, she slipped and dropped to her knees in the sands of Hueco Mundo.

"Come on." Nel said, standing by Tatsuki as the human girl breathed heavily, eyes looking at the ground, "This isn't far enough to be considered safe for someone like you. If Harribel-san's power affects you this much, we're not far enough away yet."

"No." Tatsuki said, shaking her head as she got back up and wiped the sand from her legs. She pasted a shaky smile on her face to try and emphasize that she was alright, "I was just caught off-guard. I'm used to it now." She turned back in the direction they had left Naruto in, "I-I want to watch. I want to see sensei fight."

She wanted to see him fight? She was only just now able to stand up without her legs giving out underneath the Reiatsu of Naruto's to-be enemy, and she wanted to watch him in the middle of the fray? Why were humans inquisitive like that?

A Hollow would never willingly subject themselves to be within the presence of one, let alone two, figures that utterly dwarfed them in strength. It was instinctual. A survival trait that they carried with them in the kill-or-be-killed world of Hueco Mundo.

Nel figured that fighting an instinct like that was what it meant to be a human with free will and an intellect of one's own. The capacity for reason was diverse amongst people, and apparently Tatsuki's reasoning told her that she needed to watch the fight.

But Naruto had asked Nel to ensure Tatsuki's safety, which would be harder to do in the face of an oppressive battle between an Espada and… whatever Naruto was. She wanted no part in the conflict between the Arrancar and the forces opposing them.

"I wish I knew how to fly…" Tatsuki complained before turning around to run back to get a view of the battle. Nel could have easily intercepted her and kept on moving away from the battle, but she just followed along.

A part of her really wanted to see Naruto fight as well.

XxX

(With Naruto and Harribel)

On this occasion, no messing around would be done. He wasn't going to try and gauge Harribel's capabilities slowly, he was in Sage Mode from the start and he'd be trying to bring her down hard. He couldn't afford not to give her that respect.

"This! Is! Bullshit!" Naruto said, each word emphasized by Harribel missing another close swing of her Zanpakutou at him before using Sonido to try and catch him off-guard to attempt it again. Finally, Naruto managed to block a strike using the Raijin no Ken before shoving her away as hard as he could, sending her sliding across the sky yards and yards away with ease, 'Okay, so I'm physically stronger than her… thank Kami.'

If she had more 'muscle' than him he would have started feeling rather inadequate.

"Your energy makes you seem a lot more certain of yourself now than you were a second ago." Harribel said in the midst of her standoff with Naruto, "What has changed to make you believe you have more of a chance against me?"

"Three things." Naruto said, twisting the Raijin no Ken in his hand with the crackling, whirring sound coming from it being used as a bit of a mind game, "Number one, we're not in Karakura Town anymore. Number two, my adorable little student is out of the way, so she can't get caught in this by mistake."

"And the third?"

Naruto just shrugged as the weapon spawned a second blade covered in electricity on the other end, "I'm fighting someone that can take it." With that he held his sword up in the air while still spinning it, forcing a sound of thunder to emit from the tool, "Raiton: Arashi no Denwa (Lightning Release: Call of the Storm)!"

From the sky, lightning struck down onto Naruto's sword and made him vanish in a flash as Harribel covered her eyes and flew away from it. She had been expecting an actual attack, but he simply used it to disappeared. There was still thunder sounding out in the air though, 'He didn't commit suicide. This is some sort of technique.'

Actually, why were there so many clouds all of a sudden? There hadn't been that many until Naruto got struck by lightning.

Now why were the clouds changing shape into a gigantic version of Uzumaki Naruto's face? And why was it opening its mouth?

An ear-shattering clap of thunder rang out, and then came a massive bolt of lightning, shot straight from the mouth of the gathering of clouds right at the Tres Espada who couldn't believe the sheer manipulation of the weather, 'He's powerful enough to change the very climate conditions in a place such as Hueco Mundo?'

But he was just a human… wasn't he?

Putting the proverbial running shoes on, Harribel utilized Sonido as quickly and as often as she could to avoid the constant stream of massive electric death zapping the desert sands while trying to obliterate her. Her Hierro wasn't as strong as the other Espada, even some of the ones beneath her, so this would definitely have a great chance of destroying her if it made contact.

'I can't stop and block this attack, but how long can he keep it up for?' She had no idea just how much stamina Naruto had, but once again he was just human. He couldn't be _that_ powerful. It was absolutely impossible to even consider a pure human with the power to stand up to and defeat an Espada-level Arrancar.

It wasn't stopping. She'd run away from it for at least two miles and it hadn't slowed or decreased in its intensity and power. He was burning a scar into the ground itself. The places where the lightning hit were literally superheated enough by the power behind it to harden the sand and force it to solidify together in the form of a fairly deep trench.

He had been completely honest. If he'd even dreamed of using that attack in Karakura Town, even if it hit his target quickly after the blast started, it would obliterate several city blocks.

'I don't have a choice. There's one weak point to this technique; the source.' Harribel thought as she charged a Cero with the use of her sword. Forcing herself to dodge the lightning by the thinnest of margins in order to turn around, she swung the blade directly at the cloud itself, "Cero (Hollow Flash)!"

A massive yellow beam, wider than any Cero Naruto had faced in battle thus far was shot up directly at the cloud, destroying it on contact and ending the jutsu… and hopefully Naruto as well.

But it was not to be as she could still feel his dense Reiatsu signature before he reappeared closer to the ground, still holding the Raijin no Ken.

"That was a great move." Naruto admitted, showing her a slightly singed left arm to let her know just how well-aimed her Cero had been, "I didn't know you all fired your Cero in different ways, I just thought they had different colors for different-…" He trailed off upon seeing what his own attack had done to her, "Whoa."

He hadn't dealt any substantial damage before she'd shut down his jutsu, but in making her final move to rid herself of the threat it was evident just how close it had come to truly hitting her.

The female Arrancar's jacket had been destroyed to the point where there was less than half with one sleeve remaining, and that was all. Most of the lower half of her face was her Hollow mask, and it spread down over her neck and down the top of her chest to right at her nipples, covering them. On the inside of her right breast she had the number three tattooed to signify her rank.

To be honest, he barely minded the bone mask covering the bottom portion of her face. Everyone had their quirks, physical and/or psychological.

"How did you survive my Cero?" Harribel asked, not paying the slightest bit of attention to her own state of undress, "I felt your energy centered perfectly in the center of that cloud. That was where you were. I didn't miss."

Naruto just tried to keep his eyes from peering at her breasts as best he could. There was no way he was going to tell her that he replaced himself with a Kage Bunshin that took over controlling the jutsu while he bailed out just in case to set up a secondary attack.

She ruined the plan when she destroyed the jutsu and the clone before he could ever even make his move. Since she could pick out the original's power easily from that point forward, there was no reason to risk an attack that she would see coming.

The output of power from that one jutsu was alarming however. From what she could deduce from that, he wasn't holding back. That was smart.

Well if he was presenting her with that courtesy it was only right to return the favor, especially since she believed she'd need attacks with more kick behind them to corner him and deal him devastating enough damage to register.

Naruto prepared to continue fighting once Harribel held her sword out in front of her own body with the blade pointing down. He then felt the spike of her yellow spiritual energy and literally saw it taking form outside of her body with his Rinnegan eyes before it all seemed to vanish back inside of her, "Fuck!"

He knew what that was for. He'd seen it time and time again when a Shinigami activated their Shikai and Bankai, and again when an Arrancar released its own Zanpakutou, and moved to intercept her before she could finish doing what he figured she was trying to attempt.

But the moment she absorbed all of that vast power inside of her body that she'd been projecting he knew it was too late to stop, even as he activated the just-as-quick abilities of the Asura Path to modify his body into the arm cannon that he aimed and fired a massive blast of chakra from, "Shura no Kou (Asura Attack)!"

"Ute, Tiburon (Destroy, Imperial Shark Princess)."

A powerful cyclone of water enclosed Harribel's entire body and deflected the blast in several directions before she cut her own way out of it with a single slash.

Harribel's Hollow mask now covered none of her face, taking over as a collar around her neck that connected down into an extension that covered her nipples similar to before. Trailing down her stomach from underneath her breasts were several bones, and she gained white shoulder pads on each shoulder like shark fins as well as ribbons connected to the backs of them. She gained a white miniskirt comprised of bone over some darker skirt underneath to cover what was left of her modesty, and a pair of white boots that went to her knees and white gloves that reached her elbows.

Her sword was odd, looking like a gigantic shark's tooth with gill markings, and a hilt that covered her hand protectively. It didn't look particularly sharp, but that didn't mean anything with the way that its edges were gleaming even in the strange light of Hueco Mundo.

'…So fine.' Naruto thought to himself at Harribel's change in attire, 'I can't believe I'm calling a Hollow-girl fine but damn it, it is what it is.'

"With the sacrifice made by Szayel Aporro, I know full well that you have a darker, stronger power hidden within you." Harribel said as she looked down at Naruto with an unforgiving stare, "If this is what you're capable of without even tapping into it I won't be taking my chances. I'll kill you before you find it necessary to bring out in battle."

Hence the use of her Resurrección.

"That's not sacrifice. That jerk didn't make any sacrifices." Naruto said in response, "He made a mistake… to pick on Nel when she couldn't defend herself. And it was the last mistake he ever made. That wasn't a sacrifice because he didn't go into that fight knowing he was gonna suffer, and he died without even giving you anything useful."

"We'll see." From the gill markings on her sword, Harribel started building up a highly-pressurized point of water that took to the end of her sword before firing it at Naruto in a sharp form, "La Gota (War Drop)!"

Naruto got on his horse and dodged the shot, forcing it to miss and explode like a watery shot of artillery that could have demolished a bunker. To hell with this. He wasn't going to stay on the defensive the entire time. That was Gaara's thing.

Four extra arms sprouted from his already existent shoulders via the Asura Path that helped him begin molding the chakra on both sides of his body for a powerful attack that quickly took the form of his go-to heavy-hitter jutsu. Both rang out in the open air like shrieking bells as he let one fly, "Fuuton: Rasenshuriken (Wind Release: Spiraling Shuriken)!"

Two? He made two of them just as easily as one could imagine! It missed however, as Harribel flew right out of its way and let it blow up and form its destructive wind dome off in the distance. She then had to dodge again as Naruto Shunshined right in front of her with Swift Release and swung for her directly with the second Rasenshuriken as a melee attack.

It missed as well, and upon her move to get space between them he threw it her way, resulting in it too missing and fling past her. He was so used to directly fighting his enemies these days, that someone taking a pragmatic wait-and-see approach that they actually had the power to back up and make effective was something different.

'Damn it.' Naruto thought to himself with an annoyed grunt. He really didn't want to have to go where he was anticipating this would. That ill feeling in the pit of his stomach wasn't dread over the course of the battle, it was the knowledge that he was basically poking a dragon in the face if he tapped into the kind of power he needed to take things to the level he'd require to defeat this woman.

Harribel was unrelenting though, as she kept on firing blasts of the quick to build La Gota. Naruto was officially grateful for something. He was grateful that he _couldn't_ see spirits back when he'd been a ninja. He was grateful that no one could see them back when he'd been a ninja.

Because he felt that if someone had, and they saw Shinigami and Hollows, especially the kinds that he had become accustomed to, the age of ninjas would have ended a lot sooner. Even with 2000 years to get ready for it he at this time doubted how wise a decision it was to explore beyond the limits of life and death.

Maybe it was just proportionate with the time that had passed. The next generation was always supposed to outdo the last and whatnot, so technically how many generations after his time was he up to by now?

If he wanted to see another one though, he had to counterattack. There was no earth release technique he could use because there was nothing around but sand, so that left the lightning, but she'd already seen that and managed to avoid an extremely powerful jutsu from that element.

She could feel him building up his chakra with his sword as the source, and she decided to put an end to that, "No. Not again." She fired another shot of La Gota that was well-aimed enough to blow up in the path that Naruto was heading in, disrupting his path. As he changed direction and started moving in another direction, Harribel moved through the sand cloud and attack him directly.

'She got so much faster!' Naruto noted between her avoiding a high-speed Rasenshuriken and pressing the pace against his sword moves, blocking the swings of her Zanpakutou with the Raijin no Ken, 'I'm still the stronger of the two of us though.' He blocked her next swing and started driving her back until he noticed the completely unconcerned look on her face. Why?

"Do you know what one of the taboos of being an Espada in Aizen-sama's army is?" Harribel asked as she slid to a stop in the skies off of the swing of Naruto's sword.

Naruto started twisting the double-bladed Raijin no Ken in his hand again in anticipation, "No." He said before reaching out with his hand and beckoning the blonde Espada toward him, "Banshou Ten'in (Heavenly Attraction of All Creation)!" Naruto's attempt at gravity control barely registered with Harribel who moved several feet in his direction before stopping, 'The only way you can fight that jutsu off is if you've got enough power to break its influence.'

"Too bad. I'll tell you anyway." Harribel said, hiding the amount of effort she had to exude to prevent being reeled in by Naruto's jutsu, "The only two things forbidden by an Espada in Aizen-sama's army are to refrain from utilizing the special Gran Rey Cero within the walls of Las Noches. And the other taboo, is only for an Espada ranked Cuatro and above. Due to the sheer power of these Arrancar, releasing our Zanpakutou in Las Noches is outlawed. But we aren't in Las Noches."

So she didn't have to hold back.

Upon seeing her hold her sword in the air, Naruto saw that as an opening to attack before she made her move and rushed forward to attack her only to find an impossible amount of water appearing out of thin air to surround her and streak upward into the sky.

"What the hell?" Naruto muttered to himself. He'd never seen that much water form from nothing in his entire life, and that wasn't an exaggeration. That much water could flood the majority of Karakura Town entire stories off of the ground. And she was controlling it like it was nothing, moving it around with the speed that he'd fire a baseball-sized water jutsu, "Espada numbers really mean that much?"

Yes. Number 8's Resurrección was absolutely nothing compared to number 3's. It wasn't even close.

"Cascada (Cutting Waterfall)."

XxX

(With Gaara and Kensei)

In a boom of Sonido and Shunpo, Gaara and Kensei respectively stood alone on the sands staring off in the distance. Kensei sneered over at Gaara and punched into his own palm, "And you're sure about this?" He asked, "We left the safehouse and I can sense Uzumaki in one hell of a fight right now."

"Naruto will be fine." Gaara said in his usual monotone, but with a hint of clipped emphasis behind it, "I know what I sensed in this direction. If you feel that I'm incorrect then go back or go on ahead. I'm going to fight this person."

"What are you some kind of idiot?" Kensei asked Gaara as the latter held his Shukaku-claw halberd in one hand, posted on the surface of the sand, "This mission wasn't supposed to have any fighting happen in it."

Gaara just directed a blank stare in his direction that lasted for several seconds before he looked away, "That's a good joke." Them coming all the way to Hueco Mundo and _not_ fighting. Ha. Maybe _he_ figured there wouldn't be any fighting. Gaara had been anticipating a battle the entire time.

"I'm not joking you ring-eyed brat."

"I can guarantee you I'm older than you." No longer looking around, Gaara was looking straight up into the sky at a figure clad in white looking down at the two of them. Pale skin, messy black hair, half of his head covered in a mask fragment that looked like a helmet, green eyes and green marks that looked like tears running down his face, and a Hollow hole in the throat. Yes, Arrancar.

Without sparing the 'conversation' with Kensei another second, Gaara disappeared in a move of Sonido and reappeared in the sky standing across from his alarmingly stoic foe. The two stoic warriors just stared at another until the Arrancar representing Aizen's side of the fence spoke, "Ulquiorra Cifer."

"Gaara."

It was like a meeting of the emotionless. Like if two great walls of silence came together face-to-face at once and introduced themselves out of courtesy.

Ulquiorra just sensed out what he could of Gaara's Reiatsu, and though it didn't show on his face for an instant he was quite intrigued at the desert-dwelling Equilibrium member's sort of energy, "I wonder why an Arrancar like you would side with the Soul Society. They would kill you as soon as look at you." His hands were casually shoved into his pockets as he said this.

"I don't fight for the Soul Society." Gaara said calmly, "There are others that I would care and fight for. I don't owe you and yours any sort of allegiance due to the race we apparently share. A race I might add that subsists off of devouring anything with ample spiritual energy… including one another."

"Care for another. Such a novel human concept." Ulquiorra replied, feeling his interest in coming across such a powerful, unaffiliated Arrancar decline the more he heard him speak, "And yet despite your demeanor I can see that you are serious. A Hollow that wishes to be seen as human. It's almost disgusting. I don't see it."

"There's more to existence than what you can see. What about what you feel?"

"Feelings don't exist. That's all there is to it. It's just a means to justify action."

Gaara closed his dark-ringed eyes and shook his head in pity, "I feel sorry for you. I don't believe I was even so far-gone myself millennia ago. Even I believed in feelings, even if I were convinced that they were bad for me." With a sigh he began to spin his halberd before holding it at the ready, "Either way, I will be your opponent. Prepare yourself."

Ulquiorra removed one hand from his pocket, presumably to draw his Zanpakutou, but instead of reaching for the sword at his waist, he merely lifted his fingers in Gaara's direction with a green glow at the tips of them, "Cero (Hollow Flash)!"

The speed of the green blast could be compared to an old-western quickdraw. The time between the start of his amassing of Reiryoku and the full release of it was as quick as an Arrancar's spiritual projectile could be without being a Bala.

It wasn't that Gaara had been caught flat, it was that he had not been expecting it in the slightest. Instead of being able to move, Gaara used the pole of his halberd to block and deflect what he could, finding himself driven back across the sky a measure.

When the smoke cleared, the sleeves of Gaara's cream-colored desert robes had been burned off at his shoulders from the power of the attack. As he maintained his posture from his initial block, Ulquiorra bolted above his head with Sonido with another Cero prepared to fire down.

This time when he made his move, Gaara was able to escape the attack and fly away to regain his composure. Spinning his halberd Zanpakutou again, Gaara positioned it behind his back with one free hand held up in a technical posture. Seeing Ulquiorra flitter across the sky, trying to confound him with Sonido, Gaara let a red glow gather around his free hand before he started pumping lightning-quick jabs when he saw the necessity, "Bala (Hollow Bullet)! Bala! Bala! Bala!"

Swift yet powerful red circular projectiles flew from his hand with each punch, littering the sky with a laser show for the ages.

"When you're not touching the ground your ability to sense an enemy's Reiatsu is flawed isn't it? Not as complete as it is when you're in contact with a surface." Ulquiorra asked as he steadily closed in on Gaara, "What a grave weakness to have against someone adept in aerial combat."

It was true. Gaara could sense energy all around as if he were able to see everything completely when he was on the ground. In the air, it was just normal.

After closing in, Ulquiorra attempted a rapid-fire series of knife-hand strikes at Gaara's chest that he was able to blurrily avoid in close before allowing Ulquiorra to strike him dead center, piercing straight through his loose attire.

Ulquiorra and Gaara stood off, the former interested in what had just happened, "Either you have the hardest Hierro I've ever seen on an Arrancar…" He said to himself before pulling his hand back, ripping away part of Gaara's robe to show a yellow vest around his torso with blue veins and red markings in it. Looking at Gaara's halberd he noticed that it was now a staff as the odd claw that had been on the end of it was now gone, "I see. You have a very versatile Zanpakutou without even calling upon your Resurrección."

"A smaller-scale, portable, more concentrated version of Saikou Zettai Bougyo: Shukaku no Tate (Ultimately Hard Absolute Defense: Shield of Shukaku)." Gaara explained, knowing that Ulquiorra wasn't very aware of him as an Arrancar, let alone the techniques he utilized in life as a human, "I'm not certain if your Hierro is harder or mine is, but with this it won't matter."

"You act as if impaling you is the only way to kill you." Ulquiorra offered as a rebuttal, "And now you've lost the killing edge to your weapon."

A small smile came to Gaara's face at that observation, "You act as if impaling _you_ is the only way to kill you." And honestly, he needed the extra defense just in case. Ulquiorra was not slow. In the air he was superior, and if Gaara tried to take things to the ground that still wouldn't work because the emotionless Espada would still be airborne.

If push came to shove he could always put the claw back onto the end of the pole at will. It was an extension of his will, as if it were merely another arm or leg. But Gaara had always been more about the defensive side of battle than the offensive, more reactionary as opposed to practicing activism in a fight when it was a serious one.

Ulquiorra just held up his hand in the same knife-handed attack posture that he'd been keeping it in before dashing forward to try and take Gaara's head out. After missing one strike in particular he reached for the katana at his side and drew it for a slash that Gaara had to block with a vertical positioning of his polearm.

So he was finally drawing his sword. Which meant that if this continued to escalate, he was going to use his Resurrección.

"I've noticed something about Arrancar." Gaara said, drifting away from Ulquiorra in the air as their fight lulled, "The same with Shinigami, Visoreds, or whatever you'd like to call yourselves at the time."

"Oh?" Ulquiorra actually paused in his combat to hear what he had to say, "And what would that be exactly?" It might serve to be interesting.

"It seems to be a race to the bottom for the lot of you to utilize your true strength." Reasoned the ring-eyed redhead, "As if the first one that draws upon their Resurrección in an Arrancar's case or upon their Shikai or Bankai in the case of the Shinigami respectively would be deemed weaker than the other. And I say, what does it matter as long as you survive and your enemy dies?"

"What a novel view." Ulquiorra said dryly. Gaara was full of interesting concepts and principles that he found somewhat amusing to venture forth to poke holes in, "It's also rather hypocritical from my view. You've yet to use yours either, in any battle you've fought."

Gaara just shook his head, "I refrain from using my Resurrección because until now my battles have always been fought in places where using it would destroy the immediate area. I suppose I could have used it during my battle with the Bount in the Soul Society, but it wasn't necessary to end things quickly with him and would have drawn far too much attention. That won't be the case here. Here in Hueco Mundo, I doubt anyone will even notice that I've released my Zanpakutou."

Except for Kensei, but that was because he was already down there watching. He and the rest of those Visored really were serious about fighting no one other than Aizen unless necessary. Actually, Gaara could admit to being a little hypocritical, because he _still_ hadn't used his Resurrección yet.

"I see." Ulquiorra said in understanding. Then it was more than likely in his best interest to intercept Gaara before he could draw upon his release, "I also have limitations imposed on me to keep an Espada of my level from releasing my Zanpakutou. But we're currently outside of Las Noches. Thus, Tozase, Murciélago (Enclose, Black-Winged Great Demon)."

A sickly green burst of energy exploded outward from Ulquiorra, subsiding to reveal that his hair had lengthened extensively down his back, his Hollow mask was now a fully-formed horned helmet on top of his head, his clothing became more robe-like, and he grew a pair of large black wings. Even his energy itself created dark green rain that fell down from above.

Of course Gaara only saw him for a split second before he was forced to defend from an attack that he'd barely seen coming.

Alright, so the most dramatic augmentation of Ulquiorra's abilities had been speed. Clearly. He'd been faster to begin with, but now he was absurdly outmatched. Gaara's strength had never been in his quickness. It had always been in his defense.

Gaara lifted his staff as Ulquiorra appeared right in front of him, holding a green energy javelin in his hand, "Simply defending as amicably as you have been, for this attack it will not be enough." If Gaara believed in his own Resurrección that much, he would simply keep him from using it, "Luz de la Luna (Light of the Moon)!"

At point-blank range, instead of stabbing Gaara, Ulquiorra threw it at him, forcing Gaara back through the air from the strength of the throw. But it was the instability of the javelin's energy after it left Ulquiorra's hand that gave Gaara pause.

The weapon exploded in the air on Gaara's form, causing quite the stir in the skies from the blast. But he knew that hadn't killed Gaara. All he would have needed to do to survive it was to protect his head at all costs. The confidence he had in his armored vest wasn't arrogance. Ulquiorra knew that for someone like Gaara that kind of confidence came from something being tested extensively.

From the aftermath of the explosion, Gaara slid through the skies to a stop, but he was not unscathed in the slightest, "I suppose… I was really asking for this with my remarks about your Resurrección." Blood fell freely from a wound at the juncture of Gaara's right shoulder, "Very well then."

"Like I said-." The tip of Ulquiorra's index finger began to glow black and green as he pointed directly at the wounded Arrancar, "-Simply defending yourself against me… will not be enough. Cero Oscuras (Black Hollow Flash)."

XxX

(With Ichigo)

A deadly clashing of blades echoed out across the desert between the two above captain-class adversaries. Kurosaki Ichigo and Tousen Kaname, two Shinigami with Hollow-like abilities, locked in combat with the entire desert as their battlefield.

After pushing each other away from another, Ichigo chose to draw his blade back for a swing of the sword, channeling Reiryoku to the weapon, **"****Getsuga Ten-****!"** Before he could let fly with the attack, Tousen grabbed around the Zanpakutou and kept him from attacking with it, **"What?"**

"It's such a shame when even a blind man such as myself can tell you telegraphed your attacks." Tousen said while holding onto Zangetsu, "You've fought a wide variety of opponents, but you lack-." As he finished his sentence, several large slash wounds opened up and bled freely on Ichigo's body, "-Raw years of experience as a Shinigami."

'**I never even felt him get me.'** Ichigo thought to himself as he could see his own blood stain the white sands red, **'He never even let me put the force behind the swing.'**

"You're an aggressive swordsman." Tousen commented, "Your 'on the job learning' of swordsmanship has one major weakness in it, effective as it has been for you. When you develop your fighting style through battle instead of actual instruction, you're always playing a game of catch-up against warriors that know better. And eventually you'll run into someone that won't allow you to break through the ceiling you always manage to clear in order to win your battles."

Someone like him, was what he was implying.

Instead of falling though, Ichigo swayed groggily in place before clutching his sword tighter than before much to Tousen's surprise, **"****Getsuga Tenshou (Moon Fang Heaven-Piercer)****!"** First straight overpowering Tousen with brute strength, Ichigo lashed out with his black spiritual energy, cutting a deep trench through the sands as he sent his enemy flying back off of the end of the blade, **"…Thanks for the advice. I'll make sure to keep that in mind."**

After his slight blow-up with his dad at hiding the fact that he had Shinigami powers and their subsequent little scrap above their house, Isshin commented on how Ichigo had become an incredibly battle-adept swordsman in a short amount of time.

He then proceeded to demonstrate a move Ichigo had no idea how to use and shouted at him that he still sucked at a lot of things when it came to swordfighting.

Byakuya really would have diced him up and finished him off if it hadn't been for his Inner Hollow taking over, wouldn't he have?

"_You seem to be the kind of guy that likes to crash into someone and see if you can stand up afterwards."_

Naruto. Back when he had his little trust issues with the would-be sage and they had it out for a bit.

He never really said that particular battle trait was a bad thing. He just pointed out what Ichigo's game was before they proceeded to do just that. But by now he had to know that not every enemy liked to play that game. The people like Naruto, like Kenpachi… people like that would win that way, but then there were others like Tousen, that would try to find the most indirect way to do battle, because trying to overpower another wasn't always practical.

"…I can't imagine how someone as young as you could have this kind of power." Tousen said through the billowing clouds of smoke and dust left in the wake of Ichigo's awesome attack, "Something that was gifted to me for my dedication by Aizen-sama, a blessing. You have it and you act as if having it is a curse. You don't even accept what you are. Of course then again… you have no idea what you really are."

While it was annoying, Ichigo already knew that Tousen was still in one piece. Either that or he regenerated what had been inflicted upon him again the way that he did the first time, **"Even if I'm like this it isn't that complicated. I'm still human, even if my soul is a Shinigami with Hollow power."**

"Of course you are."

What the hell did that mean? Apparently they knew everything else, so that should have been a foregone conclusion. Sure, maybe at best because of his dad he could be some weird Shinigami/human hybrid, but as long as his soul was in his body (which it was most of the time) that still counted as human.

"You have no idea…" Tousen said, "…Of what an abomination you are. And I'm not even referring to the Shinigami and Hollow power flowing through you. Someone such as yourself with no sense of true purpose or drive. No real overreaching motivation to fight, with so much potential for power. It's a slap in the face to someone like me."

"**Well I could just stab you. Would that be better?"**

"This isn't a joke." Tousen insisted, turning his Zanpakutou upside-down in his grasp, "You've seen a Resurrección before, haven't you? Something you broken Visoreds find yourselves incapable of achieving."

Oh hell.

"Witness my true power. Suzumushi Hyakushiki: Grillar Grillo (Cricket Hundredth Ceremony: Chirping Cricket)."

After being enveloped in darkness, a large, hunched Hollow emerged, covered in black fur with four clawed hands, two clawed feet, two large horn-like appendages sticking from its back, four insect wings on its back, a long tail, and a bug's head with large bulbous eyes.

Ichigo couldn't help but be caught staring. The Reiatsu signature was warped, but it was still definitely Tousen Kaname. Gross. And why was he chuckling to himself in his now distorted voice? This really wasn't funny.

"**So this is what it's like to have sight."** Cricket-Tousen said before his chuckles turned to bellowing laughter, **"I see you now Hueco Mundo! I see everything! And I can see **_**you**_** Substitute Shinigami Kurosaki Ichigo!"**

"**Honestly, I wish I didn't have to see you, but I don't really have a choice right now."** Ichigo replied before finding Tousen flying right at him, the rapid beating of his wings filling the air with sound, **"Damn it!"** Sword poised to retaliate, Getsuga Tenshou was the command of the day.

Before coming into contact with Ichigo, Tousen altered his flight pattern and crashed into the sand right in front of Ichigo to obscure his vision, forcing Ichigo to lash out with a Getsuga Tenshou prematurely.

Instead of flying to clash with Ichigo, Tousen had flown right past him and forced him to miss his attack while leaving his back open for a counterattack. From both of his eyes, Tousen charged two green beams of energy before firing them simultaneously and fusing them together mid-blast, **"****La Mirada (The Gaze)****!"**

Ichigo turned around just in time to have his vision filled with green, as he didn't have time to try and move his sword into position to try and somewhat fight the Cero-like attack. It landed and blew the teenage warrior away, displacing hundreds of meters of desert.

Tousen could only look at his bestial hands in something of amazement. Before he could begin to marvel over his power too much, he realized that he could still feel Ichigo's energy even though he couldn't see him any longer. His body was too far away, which annoyed him. He'd spent his whole life learning how to sense things to make up for his lack of sight. He had a brand new addition to his five senses that he wanted to use as much as possible.

Either way, the enemy was still present.

Once again, Tousen built up the green energy in front of his eyes and fired La Mirada again, following the path that he saw his first one burned through the sands to finish off Ichigo and stamp out his Reiatsu once and for all.

Only something was wrong.

With the tip of his Zanpakutou held straight out ahead of him, Ichigo flew straight through the middle of Tousen's attack to his horror, separating it into two waves… all the way up to the newly released Hollow himself. An insane course of action yes, but it wasn't really the first thing any enemy would find themselves prepared to counter, so it worked for him.

After all, Ichigo was the kind of guy that liked to crash into his enemies and see who could stand up afterwards. And he was getting _really_ good at being the one that could stand up afterwards.

When dealing with someone more intelligent and with more experience in fighting on a higher precipice, he was better served to drag his enemy down to his level of down and dirty combat and beat him with experience.

And when Tousen found Ichigo's sword buried through his large head, he finally understood it, **"H-How?"** He managed to choke out through the blood spilling freely from the wound and from his mouth.

"**The first time your aim was off."** Ichigo told him, the entire front of his Bankai robe was destroyed by Tousen's attack. Both of his hands tightly clutched Zangetsu after he'd run it through his massive enemy.

It was true enough though. Tousen had been slightly off. To go along with that was the fact that Ichigo had blunted as much of La Mirada's initial impact as he could have with his own energy.

Still, if a person like Tousen would have simply relied on more than what he could see he would have noticed it. He thought he was more perceptive than that, but apparently he couldn't keep his usual nature of character with the revelation of sight being bestowed upon him.

"…**You saw things better when you were blind." ** Ichigo told him honestly before moving to bring things to a close, **"****Getsuga Tenshou (Moon Fang Heaven-Piercer)****!"**

Ichigo knew that using Getsuga Tenshou while his sword was inside of Tousen would have violent results, but the Hollow driving his power-enhancement simply kept him from caring too much. Still, slicing apart his head with his energy was a brutal method of dispatching his foe.

_Extremely _brutal. Especially after his body reverted back to its normal Shinigami form upon his death.

Yeah… that wasn't the nicest sight to look at, and the blood and bits of his head were everywhere. His Hollow was extremely into it though.

"Alright." Ichigo said after allowing his Hollow power to recede. His stomach started doing flips after it had left his system and let him know how gross he found the rather barbaric end to the battle, "I guess… I'll go get Koga and Bawabawa and find everyone else now."

Because he needed to get away from there before the urge to throw up became too powerful.

XxX

(Naruto vs. Harribel)

"Okay…" A thoroughly soaked Naruto said to himself, standing on the sands of Hueco Mundo in front of a large newly created body of water, "…Well I just answered the question of, 'How strong is she really?' She just helped me make a river in the middle of a desert."

He'd carved the original gigantic trench and burned the sands into solid ground with the wide-scale lightning attack from earlier, and she'd supplied the ungodly amount of water from thin air that would have made the Nidaime Hokage green with envy.

If he hadn't had experience in avoiding and protecting against large-scale attacks, that one would have had a better-than-average chance of doing him devastating damage. Even with the countermeasures he'd taken to protect against it, it had still hurt like hell. Even with Sage Mode.

"I'm sorry." Harribel said, appearing on the ground directly across from the river that the two of them had just created from the scale of their battle. She didn't see what Naruto had done to survive La Cascada, but she was starting to think that he had more than one life if he managed to avoid that kind of attack, "But I can't let you survive. Someone like you, you would only keep getting in Aizen-sama's way."

"Heh, I'm not really afraid of dying. Not for myself." Naruto responded, running a hand through his wet hair, "Especially now since I know that apparently I'm going to have two shots at it. Just as long as I don't wind up in actual hell for something."

"That's a very careless attitude to have." Harribel said, "What use would your death serve if you didn't lose it for a reason?"

"I said I wasn't afraid of dying for myself. I didn't say that I wasn't afraid to die." Naruto said, looking at his right hand as he clenched a fist, "I'll admit it. There's a big reason that I don't want to die. Do you want to see why?" He put his hand directly on his stomach and turned his wrist clockwise, as if loosening the lock of something, "…Running low on Sage Mode here anyway…"

That simple motion caused the surface of the water between the two combatants to begin pushing toward and away from Naruto at a stronger and stronger rate. Just from what he'd done, a single subtle shockwave radiated from his body with a low hiss.

'That pressure.' Harribel said, looking down and seeing grains of sand at her feet vibrate. 'Vibrate' because neither of them were moving to disturb anything, he wasn't charging energy for any kind of attack, and there was no wind blowing at the moment, 'What is this?' His presence by itself could cause the immediate environment to react.

Her answer came in the form of the blackish chakra that covered Naruto's body, manipulating his attire into a full-sized haori and complete outfit underneath it. It seemed to be constructed of fire, but there was absolutely no heat from it. On his entire body there seemed to be some design running up his arms that was centered right around his stomach.

"The first time I used its chakra against your number eight guy I was forcing it through the completely closed seal." Naruto said, "The further I open it up, the more stable and stronger the chakra flow is, but it's more dangerous than straining it through."

"What happens if you open it all the way?" Harribel asked him, finally feeling his power jump above even her Resurrección's limits. And it wasn't just for show. She didn't even blink her eyes and he seemed to vanish in a dark flourish.

"Nobody wants me to ever do that." Naruto said from right behind her. She didn't disappoint him with the speed and ferocity she turned to strike at him with, but grabbing her right around her forearm he stopped her shark tooth-shaped Zanpakutou from cutting through his neck. He didn't even flinch at how close it was to touching him, just short of reaching his chakra cloak, "I shouldn't even be doing this, but since I'm gonna die if I lose anyway there's no real difference in risk here."

His grip around her arm tightened and the sand beneath them collapsed into a crater that slowly filled itself back up. Tightening the clenching of her teeth with that of Naruto's grip on her arm, Harribel willed a yellow mist of her Reiryoku to form around her Zanpakutou, desiring to send it out at Naruto's neck and finish the job that her sword stroke attempted to begin.

Naruto quickly struck out at her chest and knocked her away. She really was strong. Even as he was, she hadn't lost enough of her nerve to allow him any amenities in battle. She reacted before he could even form a Rasengan to attack her with in their close proximity.

He could feel the intent of that attack. It would have been too fast for him to even consider trying to dodge at that range, so he simply kept her from using it that close to him.

Harribel was knocked back halfway across the wide river before she managed to stop herself. Immediately she lashed out with her attack that had been intended for Naruto up close, quickly swinging her sword, and as she did so she split the water to the bottom with a sword-width slit that reached far past the other shore with no delay behind the motion. Had it been released against Naruto's neck he would have had no time to do anything other than suffer a severe wound to it or lose his head altogether at worst.

But even when he realized what she was going to do, his face never showed a tinge of concern for his own fate. As if he figured he would survive the attack even if it landed. His strike to her body barely landed, but her entire chest cavity throbbed in pain in the aftermath. Hierro be damned.

If he was strong enough to take her on in her Resurrección form, was he really safely containing that kind of power inside of his body? As the 3rd Espada, the power from merely releasing her Zanpakutou could destroy Las Noches from the inside. That wasn't even considering when she began actually fighting. How their battle had warped the landscape of a _desert_ exemplified that much.

The kind of power it would take to match her would have dire effects on the Human World if it was even allowed to so much as leak out from its prison. It would distort the dimensional temperament. It would cause harm to human beings and other mortal creatures without the power to mount a resistance to it.

How could he hide that much strength from the world, compress that much power inside of himself behind a single seal that could be placed on a human's body, and not warp the fabric of his world just from walking around in it?

"My entire culture sacrificed themselves trying to stop the power that I have inside of me from coming out and terrorizing the world, the way it used to thousands of years before I was ever even born." Naruto said, "Because of me it had to be that way. I might as well have killed them myself. I've fucked up tons of times since then, but that's the one I always come back to."

"What are you saying?"

"I've seen actual sacrifice. It's nice to talk about it all nobly like you do, but until you've seen 100,000 people just trying to protect their world die-. Until you've seen every person you've ever cared for dead after trying to stop something that you set into action because of a mistake-…" Naruto just trailed off and shook his head, "…No, I don't ever want you to know what that's like. I wouldn't wish something like that on the worst living creature in existence."

Thoughts of Mila Rose, Sun-Sung, and Apacci being dead in front of her flashed through Harribel's mind for a second, "When I was a Vasto Lorde, Aizen-sama saved me and taught me that sacrifice allows for the impossible to happen."

"Well he's kind of right." Naruto said, gesturing to himself as living proof. A human being should never have the kind of power he had, "But who's gonna be the one to sacrifice what to make it happen? And how much do you need to sacrifice to make it happen? To get the power he needs to reach the Spirit King?" He asked rhetorically before answering his own question, "In his case, at least 100,000 people in Karakura Town. Every single Arrancar or Hollow under his command that's died so far or will die fighting us and the Seireitei. Every soul in the Rukongai that your comrades killed during their raid. Every Shinigami he killed, experimented on, or framed over the last 100 years. Every life he ruined to make himself a God."

Most of that wasn't even sacrifice. Not any noble sort of sacrifice.

Harribel's fortitude was beginning to shake in the face of the hollow look in Naruto's eyes. With his body swathed in black energy, it made his strange ripple-patterned purple eyes stand out all the more. And those eyes couldn't lie. Those eyes expressed the truths that the mouths of most humans would hide at all costs, "You can't measure the amount that it would take to truly change the world."

"…It's funny how people like Aizen, that talk about how important it is to embrace sacrifice, never end up feeling the loss of any of the sacrificing." Even as far away as Ichigo was, Naruto could feel that he'd killed Tousen Kaname. He doubted Aizen would do anything more than play it off as fat being trimmed for the man's failure to defeat his enemy, "…I'm done."

"What?" Harribel lowered her Zanpakutou momentarily out of sheer shock.

"I'm done fighting you." Naruto deadpanned seriously, "Even with your Resurrección you can't beat me, and you're not bad. You just attached yourself to a bad person, and I don't have a reason to take you on. You attacking me isn't enough to make me fight you when I don't want to."

She didn't kill humans. She didn't try to harm a vulnerable Nel in her child form when she had orders to bring her back or kill her. She even just allowed a fully grown, full-powered Nel to leave with Tatsuki to keep his precious little student from possibly being collateral damage in the extremely destructive battle that they'd been fighting.

To emphasize his decision, Naruto turned his back directly on her as if he were going to walk away. In the direction of Las Noches as a matter of fact. As if she were just going to let him go, just like that.

That was so… insulting.

How dare he?

Biting her own lip out of anger hard enough to draw blood, Harribel clutched her sword tightly before deciding to take this slight out on him and show him the error of his ways. Blurring forward in Sonido she had to draw herself to a stop when an extended chakra claw that had emerged from Naruto's back was positioned right in front of her face. In the palm of it was a vibrating black ball of pure energy, smaller than a baseball in size.

She just froze in place.

One of his actual hands was positioned to bring her directly toward him with just a gesture of his fingertips. Even if he couldn't reel her in, he'd have slowed her down enough that there would be no way to avoid what was in his chakra claw.

Did he just kill her?

Instead of attacking her, Naruto just extended his claw to push it past her face and throw it, sending the ball flying over the dunes of the desert, through the air and into the distance, "…Chou Mini Bijudama (Super Mini-Tailed Beast Ball)."

A few seconds later, Harribel felt a ghastly release of energy and turned around to see a blast rise into the air about a half-mile away. After another few seconds a horrid wind blew their way sending tons of smoke, sand, and dust flying past them.

"There wasn't anything over there." Naruto assured her, bringing his chakra claw back to his cloak as he noted the look of shock on her face, "…Really, is it that hard to believe that a human could get this strong?"

That was a _miniature_ version of that attack, which had to mean that there was a bigger one. The smaller one would have blown the whole wall off of most of a single side of Las Noches. What could a bigger one do?

And he still wasn't going as far as he could go with his overall power?

Harribel's chest heaved in and out after having seen her life as a Hollow and an Arrancar flash before her eyes. Why was she anxious? It would have been her sacrifice had she been killed with the Mini Bijudama. A sacrifice for…

…For Aizen's goal.

"That feeling you have." Naruto said to her, pointing at his own head, "I can sense negative emotions. You're so sure about that view on sacrifice you have, and that's fine. What are you sacrificing for though?" Yoruichi told him to ask a question. A question to everyone that he came across, even on the enemy's side, "…Did you see Aizen Sousuke's Kyoka Suigetsu?"

There was no way Aizen could amass such a hodge-podge of people underneath him without something to pull them all together. They fought amongst themselves more often than anything. And while the Espada were fine for keeping him from requiring quality control himself, how did he ever get Hollows of that kind of level of power to follow him, a Shinigami with a shifty demeanor?

The same way he pulled the wool over the eyes of the entire Soul Society before killing the Central 46 and making his great escape with the Hougyoku; Kyoka Suigetsu. For when shows of his force just weren't enough by themselves to net him powerful underlings.

"Do you really care that much about Aizen wanting to kill the Spirit King? Do you even care at all?"

"…No."

"Then tell me why you're fighting for him! Why are you putting those girls that follow you on the line just to fight a war to end the world, when you don't even want to huh?" Naruto shouted at her, littering the area with his own rampant aura. Something was wrong though. Thinking about something like that shouldn't have worn on her mind so heavily, and it was clear it was taking its toll on her psyche.

The hypnosis was that strong? It wasn't like a genjutsu, something he could break another person of. This was something she had to settle within her own head. And what she came up with would determine whether or not this ended fairly well or not.

A flash of ill intent alerted Naruto, but he couldn't see any threat. Not until it passed through Harribel from behind in the form of an extended Zanpakutou. It was close enough that it almost stabbed through him as well, but he was able to catch it between his chakra cloaked hands, protecting him as he slid back across the sand.

He knew that attack.

The sword retracted back from whence it came, and a wide-eyed Harribel dabbed at the bleeding wound on the left side of her chest. The same one that had just pierced her through the back, "…Ichimaru."

"Yare… how'd you know to block that?" The air seemed to shimmer before the silver-haired Ichimaru Gin came into sight, wearing a tattered-looking cloak over his usual outfit, "This cloak is supposed to conceal my Reiatsu. Mix it with a little Kidou, and honestly you never shoulda seen it comin'."

"Your killing intent." Naruto said, moving forward to grab onto Harribel before she collapsed from the mortal wound. He'd hit her somewhere bad. She had been close enough to him that her blood had splashed onto his face, "Even if I can't feel, see, or hear anything else I can always find people from their ill intent."

But even Gin's only lasted for just a split-second. That was serious control, beyond anything that any human Naruto had ever faced could do. He couldn't get a read on the guy. He'd fought him and he still couldn't get a read on him.

You couldn't hide your true nature from Naruto's ability to sense the intentions of others, but Gin could mask it. He could mask it so well that right then Naruto couldn't even feel it from him despite his attack on him through Harribel.

Speaking of whom, she was still breathing, labored as it was, but she wasn't dead. Her blood was now all over him. Gin had hit her heart, either nicked it or gotten it outright. His aim had been too dead center to not have gotten any part of it at all. She'd even dropped her Zanpakutou.

"Why? Would you really go through her to get to me?" Naruto asked rhetorically. He'd already received the answer to that question, and it was bleeding freely in his arms, "He really doesn't care about these guys at all if he let you come out here to do that."

"Well the point of me coming out here was to get a closer look at that power of yours, and she lost to you didn't she? Outright. If she used all of her moves on you, she'd never be as useful to Aizen-san as she was before she fought you when all of her abilities were a mystery to your side." Gin said with a shrug, "I figured, if anyone could understand me going through her to get a shot to kill someone like you, it would be Harribel herself. So I took the chance she gave me. _That's _sacrifice." He finished, his unsettling grin getting wider as he spoke.

To the surprise of no one, Naruto refrained from attacking Gin. He had a critically wounded person in his grasp, and when Gin pointed his sword in a completely different direction, he knew exactly what the rogue Shinigami was aiming at.

Nel had let Tatsuki wander back close enough to observe the battle. Damn it, he'd told her that he wanted her to study everything she could see on this mission, so this was his fault too, "That thing doesn't have that much range on it." He'd seen how far Gin's Shikai could go, and Tatsuki wasn't close enough to reach with it, "You make a move to go for Tatsuki, I'm going right for your throat. You realize that right?"

"You really don't know the first thing about my Zanpakutou do you?" Gin asked, "So I'm gonna go now… because that fight was cool, and your powers are cool… and I need to tell people about _everything _I just saw. And I don't want to fight you again, because I'll have to use my Bankai. If you make me use my Bankai, I can guarantee you the first person I use it on won't be you. Make one of your copies to cover Harribel so you can move freely, and I'll take that as the fight starting."

He had a lot of faith in that Bankai that it'd have a fair chance of beating Naruto to Tatsuki.

Gin took a step away and didn't see Naruto make a move, so he perceived the lack of offensive action as his bluff being preserved, "Bye-bye now. Maybe next time I can show you my real power. Or not. You're actually a pretty scary guy." Naruto just glared him down, "Oh don't give me that look. Compared to Aizen-san, I'm a pretty nice guy. You'll see."

Naruto just flipped him off with six chakra claws as he left with Shunpo. He wasn't going to take any chances in moving slow. He'd seen Naruto's Mini Bijudama and he didn't want to be anywhere near where he could aim it or the full-sized version at him.

With Gin's lack of negative emotions and the cloak he wore that hid Reiatsu signatures, Naruto couldn't sense him to target him from a distance like a howitzer, "Sure. Next time. Right." Hand on his stomach, he turned his wrist to the right to close off the loosened seal and return to normal.

And that still left him with a gravely wounded and scantily clad enemy in his grasp. Damn it, he stopped fighting so that he wouldn't have to kill her.

"Damn it. You'd better not die." Naruto told Harribel, not knowing or caring if she could hear him or not, "I didn't pull my punch just to watch you go down like that after the fact."

…So now what?

She was still technically the enemy, so did he continue on with the mission, or did he help someone that had been betrayed by their side just to get an edge. Because he couldn't do that on the spot. He never managed to learn medical jutsu before the end of his age, and even if he'd somehow managed to engineer his own medical techniques, his chakra wasn't suited to healing others. The addition of the Juubi's chakra to his only made it good for destroying things.

Was there something that could be done without having to return? Maybe the resident Arrancar of the team would know if there was something that could be done to fix one of his own race, but he had bugged out earlier and seemed to be in the middle of something quite serious.

"…Hurry up and win already Gaara." Naruto said to himself through gritted teeth, "We're not in Karakura anymore. You don't have any excuse to not use it now."

XxX

(Gaara vs. Ulquiorra)

With a series of coughs, Kensei removed himself from the sand that had covered him after Ulquiorra's pitch-black Cero had been fired on Gaara.

It was as if the damned Arrancar had displaced the entire desert with that one attack.

Wincing just from the shockwave of the blast that hadn't even touched him, Kensei stood up rubbing his head only to stop and stare at the actual zone that had truly been affected by the Cero Oscuras. The sand itself had been burned black where his energy had touched it.

"Looks like I'm not the only one that has trouble holding back." Kensei remarked to himself, looking up into the sky to see Ulquiorra there, now staring down at him, "Well it looks like I'm next up. And I really didn't want to fight."

"No. That… won't be necessary."

Rising from the blacked-to-a-crisp sand, a horrendously wounded Gaara stood as if he were rising from the dead. In fact, he looked the part. The wounds on his body were horrendous. His desert-colored robe was destroyed, as was his entire left arm and left eye. There was no portion of Gaara's form that wasn't covered in his own blood and grime.

"I would hate… to make you go back on your own conditions for accompanying us." Gaara said in a raspy, labored voice, signifying how much damage his throat had taken in addition to the rest of his body, "My friend in the sky… let me tell you, that the desert even in the Human World has a trait about it that sets it apart from any other sort of climate in the world. There is no other environment that can reflect true hopelessness, true despair so completely."

Ulquiorra raised an eyebrow, wondering what Gaara was babbling about, "I do wonder, what the point of all these worthless words of yours happens to be."

"Let me show you the depths of my despair. The despair that I felt walking the afterlife, isolated, after I failed my best friend, my family, my country… and after the entire ninja world came to an end." From the sands, Gaara's halberd shot back into his right hand upside-down, allowing him to stab it into the ground, "Camine Solo, Páramo (Walk Alone, Wasteland)."

The weapon sank into the sand and the entire desert began to rock and wave as if it were the ocean tossing and rolling in the middle of a powerful storm, engulfing Gaara's body and causing him to disappear from sight entirely.

As far as Ulquiorra and Kensei could sense, Gaara's Reiatsu vanished entirely, as if it had never been there at all.

What the hell?

XxX

(With Ichigo – Elsewhere in Hueco Mundo)

Continuing on his way with Koga on the back of Bawabawa, Ichigo felt the sizeable Reiatsu of Gaara vanish into thin air. But that didn't make any sense, "That's impossible. Someone like Gaara's wouldn't just disappear. It would fade into nothing, but it wouldn't disappear like that."

Koga picked up on Ichigo's mutterings and reacted, as he hadn't said much since his battle with Tousen had concluded. To hear him say something like that, it was important, "What was that Ichigo?"

"It's just…" Shaking his head, Ichigo slightly changed the subject, "Did you ever hear Gaara explain why he won't use his Resurrección no matter what?"

"I'm afraid I missed that story while I was getting set up in Equilibrium as a member."

"Well it wasn't a story actually. He didn't really explain anything, and the only people that even heard what he said were me, Naruto, Urahara-san, and Chad." Ichigo explained, "This was back when Chad was training to improve his arm's destructive power. He asked Gaara to show him his Resurrección so he could learn what it was like to fight against an Arrancar's true power. And when he refused and I asked why not, Gaara just said… did we ever stop and wonder why Hueco Mundo was a desert?"

"Why?"

"Because apparently it wasn't like this until after he died as a human and wound up here."

* * *

**Yeah, sorry it took so insufferably long to put this one out. I don't really have an excuse, it's just that I so completely lacked the slightest amount of motivation to dip back into this story that I didn't want to force anything. If I write something, I want it to be as good as I can make it, so if I'm not feeling the flow I just won't do it, and there's no force on the planet I've come across that can make me. I don't want to backslide just to force out a chapter. I want to keep trying to get better and if it doesn't flow it won't go.**

…**And here I said I wasn't making an excuse…**

**Oh well. Again, feel free to blame my mind. Despite the fact that I lost it long ago, it still gives me fits quite often.**

**Now it's 3 a.m. in my part of the world, and I'm going to retire for the night/morning.**

**Hope you enjoyed, and Kenchi out.**


	33. The Empty Glass

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. I also do not own my own laptop, as mine was rendered a brick due to its dead hard drive. With that occurring, I lost all of my notes from all of my stories and what I'd already written of this chapter at that time, which is why it took so long to update.

…I'd already written this once and then lost it. Trying to remember this with no notes was a bitch, and it wasn't fun, hence the delay.

My apologies however.

Quick Recap: Equilibrium is hired by the Seireitei for a recon mission to find Las Noches and try to ascertain the enemy's strength from what they can find of the stronghold. There is no such thing as a secret mission in Bleach, therefore the heroes are set upon by powerful enemies in Aizen's army. Naruto winds up battling Harribel, and Gaara winds up taking on Ulquiorra.

**Chapter 33: The Empty Glass**

* * *

Try as he might, no matter how much time passed, Naruto found it hard to absolve himself of feeling empathy for those slated as his enemies. When push came to shove, he could be as merciless or business-up-front as he wanted to be when in battle. If he didn't have hatred in his heart for his foes, he found it damnably difficult to detach himself from their woes.

It was a bad habit to have when you were a supernatural warrior, but then again seeing someone as loyal as Harribel get betrayed by someone on her own side just so they could get a chance at catching him unawares and killing him sort of justified it.

He was still covered in her blood from when Gin stabbed through her to get to him for God's sake.

Setting Harribel down on the sand, Naruto tapped his foot trying to think of what he could do. Without any options that would actually fix the problem, he began slowly transferring his chakra to her. Maybe more power would help her body keep going long enough for something miraculous to happen.

Even if it didn't, he wasn't about to quit until he felt that heartbeat stop. He had always been stubborn like that.

Naruto wasn't a healer. He never had been, and even if he had eventually come around to being suited for it there had never wound up being anyone to even show him how to get started on healing. The consequences of being the last man standing of his entire culture and all…

Aside from that, all of his focus had been on his goal of peace, and then on what he could do to keep the Juubi back.

He could say that time got away from him, but that joke was too bad for him to make in such dire straits. He'd have to remember that one for later.

So set on thinking of some way to help Harribel survive, he barely noticed the arrival of Nelliel and Tatsuki to his exact location until he felt his female student jump on his back, "Sensei that was amazing! Are you seriously telling me I can be _that_ strong?"

"There's always a chance," Naruto said, before Tatsuki realized that he was looking down at his gravelly wounded opponent.

Was he… sad? But he had won. She then realized that she'd never seen Naruto after he'd killed someone. Taking down bestial Hollows with only the instinct to kill was one thing, but taking down others with actual personalities, with goals, dreams, all of the above, he always regretted it.

Then again, as she looked down at Harribel, Tatsuki couldn't help but feel some remorse as well. Tatsuki had only killed Hollows. Even Grand Fisher as an Arrancar was more monster than any sort of humanoid creature. Harribel looked just like a normal woman. She bled red just like any human did.

"You can't fix her?" Tatsuki asked, "But you can do… well, anything, can't you?"

Naruto's lips quirked for a second, but there was no time for the ego to shine through today, "Well, I can bring back the dead… one time. It doesn't work on souls though, or Shinigami or Hollows. I don't think even if I had med supplies on me I could actually do anything to help her for much longer," A pronounced frown spread across his face, "I can't think of anything I've got that'd work."

Nelliel looked down pensively at the gravely injured Arrancar that had taken over her rank in Aizen's Army and then over to the man who actually seemed to be concerned with her condition, "You aren't thinking of simply killing her? To end her suffering and all?" She was met with a heated glare for her comment.

"Why? Because I'm supposed to think all Arrancars are evil or something?" Naruto asked rhetorically with a bite to his tone, "She was wrong. She followed someone who gave her a screwed up idea of sacrifice, and I'm pretty sure Kyoka Suigetsu might have been involved."

Oh did his hatred of illusions still ever exist, and Aizen's was absolutely awful from what he'd heard of it.

But either way, he'd done this for humans who had been his enemy. He'd have done this for a Shinigami who had been his enemy. Not doing so for Harribel because she was an Arrancar was simply racist. She wasn't evil, and she didn't deserve unconditional destruction just because she was an Arrancar.

"She's not a bad person, she just made a mistake. You can't learn anything from your mistakes when you're dead," Naruto said gravely, "…I should know. And it's such a waste to think about killing her. So I've got to find some way to stop this long enough for Gaara to finish what he's doing so we can go home and heal her."

A moment of hesitation, before a sigh came from Nel. She couldn't leave someone in cold blood like this, even if she wanted no part of the war on one side or the other, "Step back if you would. I can do this."

Naruto looked up at the green-haired Arrancar oddly. What exactly could she do? He didn't know the first thing about what she was capable of. She'd never fought. Never exhibited any of her abilities around him or any of Equilibrium.

Whatever he had been expecting, seeing Nelliel basically spew thick, clear liquid onto Harribel was certainly not it. Both he and Tatsuki could only stare dumbly as the two of them watched her gag herself to force the resulting reaction.

"What… the-…?"

"-Fuck?"

Naruto started, Tatsuki finished.

…That was gross, and to come from such a beautiful woman as well was more than a little shocking.

Nelliel simply turned back to them and shrugged at their expressions of surprise. It wasn't really _that _big of a deal, was it? Perhaps they were just confused? In that case, she felt the need to explain, "My saliva has powerful healing properties to it. She should be fine with rest. I can heal her wounds but I'm not able to restore her Reiryoku."

"No," Naruto declared outright and resolutely.

No? 'No' what? She'd told him what her powers did. He'd literally seen it happen. The wound that went right through Harribel's chest was closed. She still looked rather rough from the ordeal and it would take a short while for her to recover, but for the most part she would be fine.

"Uh-un," Naruto continued refusing with a wave of his arms, "No ma'am. I've been around for a long time. I know what drool looks like, and I know what you just did. That wasn't drool. That was puke. You threw up on her."

"Totally threw up on her," Tatsuki said in a follow-up. There was just no defending it. It didn't matter if it was clear-colored or not, "I mean, it's cool that it heals people and everything, but let's just call a spade a spade here. That was throw-up."

"Is it really that important?" Nelliel prompted, her usually present red markings on her face not to be mistaken for a blush of embarrassment, "It's saving her life. It doesn't matter what it is."

It was true enough, and both teacher and student weren't saying that it wasn't entirely worthwhile. That didn't make it any less strange however.

"You're right. It's not important how you're healing her," Naruto agreed with a more casual air emanating from him and Tatsuki, "I'm really glad you can do that actually. We're just saying… call it what it is," Normally Tatsuki would find any reason outside of training to contradict her teacher, but in this instance she agreed one-hundred percent.

"Ugh…" Nelliel groaned with a roll of her eyes. At least Harribel would survive the day.

XxX

(With Gaara – Elsewhere within Hueco Mundo)

The tumultuous hell of desert that had been Hueco Mundo's sands came to a standstill to reveal Gaara's form to Ulquiorra and Kensei once more. In the air, his wings flapping to allow him the maintenance of flight, the emotionless Arrancar stared down at his similar-race enemy.

As far as Resurreccións went, Gaara's was not the most visibly impressive. His form didn't dramatically change, and his Reiatsu didn't increase to smothering, oppressive levels. All in all it was… remarkably _under_whelming and low-key. It was perfectly Gaara in another form of the term.

On Gaara's head sat a turban, while the rest of his clothing consisted of loose silver pants and a white sash as well as pointed shoes. Gaara's torso and arms were covered in blue markings that vaguely resembled veins. On his hands and forearms they were covered with yellow gauntlets that resembled five-fingered versions of the blade of his Zanpakutou's usual form.

As a result of drawing upon his Resurrección, Gaara's wounds had been healed entirely, something that irked Ulquiorra, but he had known what would happen. It had been half the reason he'd been trying so hard to kill Gaara before he could even access his trump card.

It didn't matter though. He would simply have to deal him his damage again. After all, he couldn't feel any change in Gaara's Reiatsu. He couldn't feel anything from Gaara at all. The strongest beings couldn't hide all of their energy the way Gaara was. That had to mean that he wasn't much stronger than he had been in the first place. Against Ulquiorra that simply wouldn't do, as the dark-haired, pale being had more tricks still that he could draw upon to obliterate the redhead.

"Is that all?" Ulquiorra asked expressionlessly as Gaara stared up at him impassively, "What have you really accomplished by releasing your Zanpakutou other than healing your wounds?"

Gaara didn't say a word, simply letting Ulquiorra get his soliloquy in once more. At first Gaara thought that the Espada was a lot like him, but then he realized that Ulquiorra really seemed to really like talking. A lot. Not in conversation, but just in spirit-breaking attempts to lecture people he deemed beneath him.

"Compared to mine, your power is so insignificant I can't even feel it."

Not even a twitch occurred on Gaara's face, despite Ulquiorra's slight at his Resurrección.

"I don't understand why you continue to fight me, knowing that nothing you will do will prevent me from ending your life."

Gaara closed his ringed eyes and let out a sigh. The kind of sigh a parent lets out when a child tries their patience, "…Do you remember what it was like to die? If you did, you wouldn't ask me that question. It's not a matter of resolve, or belief in one's abilities. Nothing of the sort. Sometimes it doesn't need any deeper explanation other than the instinct to survive."

With a flap of his wings, Ulquiorra's sheer Reiatsu was dispersed as he began to build speed for his next move. The wind was enough to seemingly blow Gaara's entire body away into grains of sand that rejoined the desert from whence they came.

Where would he reappear?

The desert began to quiver, and up rose dozens of mammoth sand giants, their heads resembling sand castles as they lumbered into existence, just born into the world.

"Runuganga," Ulquiorra said, recalling the name of the sandy Hollow that had been given to it during its time in life before its demise… back before Gaara's reawakening, "You can create Runuganga whenever you wish?"

"**And as many as I wish,"** Gaara's voice echoed out from all of the sand beings, **"Runuganga is an extension of my will. As long as there is enough sand around to create the bodies, and I have enough Reiryoku to animate them, I can do as I like."**

"A worthless show of power," Ulquiorra assured him, forming black energy on the tip of his index finger, "Granted, one Runuganga is an imposing force to weaklings, but to those that are truly strong, even numbers such as these are simply worthless. Now taste despair. Cero Oscuras (Black Hollow Flash)."

The army of Runugangas were destroyed, their masks (their only visible weak point) going up into oblivion along with their bodies as Ulquiorra swept the sands with his attack.

Amid the sandstorm that Ulquorra's callously cold attack had created as a side-effect, Gaara's body formed right behind the winged Arrancar from the sand flying through the air. Ulquoirra would have never known that Gaara was there had he not felt the light from the Cero Gaara had the gall to charge right at his back.

Ulquiorra spun around and instantly flapped away one mighty time, covering himself with his wings as he moved away.

Gaara's yellow Cero lit up the darkened skies of Hueco Mundo as Kensei watched from down below. Every so often he would sputter and spit out sand as he watched the battle, "Peh, fucking sand…" But either way, Gaara was getting the job done, and he didn't know how, "I can't even sense how strong he's supposed to be."

Ulquiorra's Hierro left his body and white attire significantly burned, but with no loss of body parts other than the injuries suffered to his wings that were next to useless.

"This doesn't make any sense," The emotionless Arrancar said, watching his enemy with a pensive eye, "How do you have enough power to harm me when I can't even sense you?"

With smoke still rising from the hand that he shot Ulquiorra with, Gaara slowly lowered it, "The release of my Zanpakutou is powerful enough to turn my immediate surroundings into sand. After that point, anything my Reiatsu comes close enough to affect is slowly pieced apart as well, as if it were being battered by the force of a skin-tearing sandstorm. This is the reason why I cannot use my Resurrección in the Human World."

Ulquiorra remained silent, taking in what he was hearing.

"Barragan didn't take kindly to my existence," Gaara said, reminiscing as best as he could. Due to his slumber he remembered centuries and millennia past better than most other Hollows that lived for as long, "A Hollow that wouldn't bow to him and hated being a Hollow enough to turn himself into an Arrancar. His underlings were relentless."

Even now he could remember it. He couldn't forget it. It took up the better part of three centuries of his time to deal with, and the consequences of such, he and every Hollow had to look at every day.

"No matter how many I killed there were always more, willing to throw themselves at me in an effort to take my life for his approval," Gaara continued, the sandy wind howling and reflecting his mood even if his face did not, "Hueco Mundo was never beautiful, but it was closer in appearance to the Human World than you would think it could have been. There were trees, grass, water… but it was all made of Reishi, and it simply couldn't stand up to the presence of my Resurrección for the better part of a millennia."

Ulquiorra narrowed his eyes and felt something akin to anger swell inside of him, "And you honestly expect me to believe that all of _this_ is because of you?" He said, referring to the entirety of Hueco Mundo

"The sand is unforgiving, and merciless. It doesn't care," Gaara said, holding up a hand and causing a whirlwind of sand to appear in it, corresponding with a massive cyclone that surrounded the immediate battlefield. Hopefully Kensei had the foresight to get away after he realized what was going on, because with all of this sand to work with, there was no way Gaara could hold back enough to ensure his safety, "I didn't have to do all of it myself. My sand ate down to the Reiryoku of Hueco Mundo's very atmosphere and changed what my raw energy hadn't touched itself. It warped the entire climate. Barragan's powers didn't help any. Between him and myself, this world died over the course of hundreds of years."

Ulquoirra couldn't even see the moon in the sky any longer. All he could see was sand. There was nowhere to fly, as there was no distance far enough. It seemed that any sand within Gaara's scope of vision was his to use, as it was partly his to begin with.

So it had come to this.

Not even trying to dodge, Ulquiorra closed his eyes as the furious sandstorm engulfed his body. Gaara felt no remorse or sorrow as he disappeared amid the furious grains of earth, "El Beso del Desierto (Kiss of the Desert). The sand will rend your flesh from your bones and drain the liquids from your body. Hierro or not, there is no escape."

"Resurrección: Segunda Etapa (Resurrection: Second Stage)."

Even Gaara visibly reacted in surprise when he felt the telltale signs of a _second_ Resurrección from his enemy, as a sickly black and green glow fought off his angrily swarming sand with the Reiatsu it generated alone. That was impossible. An Arrancar only had one release. Their true power could only be set free once. You couldn't hide more of it and release it in stages.

So enraptured by his own thoughts on the limits of an Arrancar, Gaara didn't feel what had happened to him until he realized that he was missing his left arm and leg, and half of his torso. He didn't realize something had happened until he heard a deafening, city-smashing explosion behind him in the air.

Gaara's sandstorm ended as his body fell, and as it did, Ulquiorra's body rose.

His clothing was gone. His black wings were repaired and his Hollow hole seemed to be dripping black blood from it. On his arms and from the waist down he was covered in black fur, all the way down his claw-like fingers and talon-like feet. The tear-marks on his face became more pronounced than ever, and instead of his mask fragment on his head he had two bat ears.

"Lanza del Relámpago (Lance of Thunder and Lightning)," Ulquiorra said in explanation of his last attack that Gaara never even felt until it had already torn him apart, "My apologies. The power in it makes it quite difficult to aim. With a direct hit, there should have been nothing left of you. It's a shame you had to suffer for my lack of accuracy, but today you've seen something even Aizen-sama hasn't seen."

On the ground, Gaara's breaths came raggedly as he fought for every breath of air the remainder of his body took in, "I… see. So even you can keep a secret from your… master," He said in between coughs, "What a secret."

And he meant it.

Without saying another word, Ulquiorra's long, thin tail swished around as he aimed an unstable, black Cero at Gaara's body, "Cero Oscuras (Black Hollow Flash)."

The shot and the resulting blast carved straight through to the bedrock at the bottom of the ocean of sand. For a moment, the bottom of the desert could be seen before Hueco Mundo itself seemed to remember what it was and filled itself back in with even more sand.

Gaara's body was nowhere to be found.

"You're not a true Hollow," Ulquiorra said into the wind as the noise from his destructive attack finally settled, "You're a fool, grasping at something none of us have possessed since our deaths. Even if you're as thorough and brutal as a Hollow in combat, you show remorse, regret for the things you've done. How… human of you."

And now it was time to turn his attention to the Shinigami that had undergone the incomplete Hollowfication. Kensei could try to hide it, but Ulquiorra had already been told about the Visoreds by Aizen. Killing one of them now would be advantageous later.

He still had something that he hadn't completed however, and it was something that simply would not be ignored or set aside.

"**You will find it quite difficult to end my life,"** Gaara's voice boomed out from throughout the desert as a massive amount of its sands were used to reform his body back to an unharmed state, "There is a way to defeat me in the desert, but I wonder, can you find the way?"

"You can regenerate in that form?" Ulquiorra asked, somewhat impressed by Gaara's reconstitution from a direct hit by the Cero Oscuras, "Odd. Most Arrancar have to give up the ability of regeneration for additional power."

His body quickly returned to normal, Gaara let a ghost of a smirk cross his face, "I've given up enough both in life and in death alike. It would be a shame if even my own abilities chose to take from me even now," Opening his arms wide, the smirk dropped swiftly from Gaara's face as he beckoned Ulquiorra, "Come Espada. If your power is as vast as the sky, mine is as vast as the earth. Let us see who stands superior."

XxX

Harribel thought she was dead. She felt that she had to have been. She had seen the sword stabbed through her heart from behind her. She was powerful, but a fatal attack was a fatal attack, and you didn't get back up from getting your heart pierced.

But if she was aware that she should have been dead, she wasn't dead. It didn't work like that.

Aside from being able to effortlessly feel the wickedly forceful battle raging on in the distant desert somewhere, she could hear conversation. That wasn't supposed to happen either when you were dead.

"…-a damn bust. Somebody's got to flush that S.O.B. out somehow," That was Uzumaki's voice. She'd heard enough of it to recognize the distinct timbre of it by now, "No matter what, they'll see us coming even if we leave and try again later, but there's too much that could go wrong if I kept us going."

He wasn't as insane as he appeared to be on the surface then. Good. He understood his position. The rest of the Espada still remained inside. They were fresh, and they knew more about the abilities of him and his allies than he knew of theirs.

Even if he sacrificed his underlings to fight his way in, it would be a mostly fruitless endeavor.

"I can tell you for sure that Aizen isn't going to come out and fight unless it's on his terms," Nelliel. Permanently back in her adult form from the sounds of things, "They won't be his terms if he thinks he has the slightest chance of defeat. Until he's assured of his victory no matter the extenuating circumstances, he won't fight you or anyone else himself."

"What a pussy," The human girl. The tomboy if she remembered the people correctly.

"Oi, watch your fucking mouth Tatsuki-chan," Harribel heard Naruto of all people admonish the young lady under his care, "Honestly… from the mouths of babes."

"He wouldn't have sent her out to fight against you if he didn't have something in mind," Nelliel said, clearly thinking on just what the major issue could be, "Showing mercy is fine, but you should be very careful. This could all just be a part of his plans."

From where he sat in the sands, Naruto frowned and turned his eyes Harribel's way. He was aware that she was awake, but didn't let on that he knew as much. Letting her feel somewhat safe, that she had that much of an edge over them would smooth things over for the time being and keep her from being hostile.

"I don't think so," Naruto said, "I know Aizen doesn't mind stepping on his soldiers to get ahead, but I don't think he likes it whenever someone else has one of his toys. Remember how hard he came after you? He sent three of the Espada to get to you, and you were just a kid that didn't remember you had actual power. You didn't matter to his plans."

A life meant nothing to Aizen other than a means to an end or an obstacle to rid himself of.

"He came after me for a reason," Nelliel let on, "Any Arrancar that he'd created over the last few decades with the help of the Hougyoku, he'd make sure that he got them back by any means necessary, either that or made sure that they were dead and couldn't be used for info on how he made us."

"This isn't the first time I've heard about that thing, the Hougyoku. I'm thinking that you know a bit about how he used it to make you guys into stronger Arrancar?" Tatsuki asked, scratching her head and getting a shake of the head in the negative from Nelliel, "Why not?"

Nelliel pointed to the mask fragment that sat atop her head, no longer broken as it had been, "Your friend fixed my wounds that led to my energy leaking free, but I still suffered an extremely severe head injury. She can repair my head as well as she likes. Some things up there will still be fuzzy for a short while still."

And Hidan was useless in that regard as well, because he hadn't been paying attention to anything involving the Hougyoku, even when it had made his transition into an Arrancar that much more successful. He had a tendency to ignore such things when they didn't involve outright bloodshed.

"Well some things are better off not being known," Naruto said, a grin slowly spreading across his face, "…Like knowing that Nel threw up on Harribel to fix her."

"It was _saliva_," Nelliel enunciated purposefully, everyone there noting that a shiver rolled through Hallibel's body after she'd heard as much. They were all so mean to let her think that they still thought she was unconscious, "You're welcome by the way."

"Yeah, we know you're awake," Tatsuki deadpanned with a grin, throwing a handful of sand over at Harribel. Stronger than her or not, still in her Resurrección or not, Tatsuki's sensei had already proven that he was the baddest human walking the face of the planet, sapping the fear from her when it came to the response of one Arrancar, "So if you're waiting for a chance to kill us, don't worry about it. Sensei and Nel together would blow you away if you tried- OW!"

"You aren't strong enough to run your mouth to people that can kill you in one move," Naruto chided, his eyes switching back from Rinnegan immediately after giving Tatsuki a Shinra Tensei fingerflick to the forehead, "You can mouth off to people on your level though. No apprentice of mine isn't going to be a smartmouthed shit. It's tradition."

"You're such a good role model," Tatsuki replied sarcastically, rubbing the new red mark on her forehead, "Really. When I turn 2000 years old or however old dirt is, like you are, I want to be just like you."

"Fuck you."

"Fuck you right back."

Naruto just glared at Tatsuki for several seconds before speaking up, "If you didn't already have living parents, I would have become your legal guardian by now," That being said, he turned to Harribel and jerked his thumb at his trainee, "Seriously, she's perfect."

Tatsuki rolled her eyes and spoke sardonically, "Would you jump ahead in my training and teach me a second element if I sat on your lap and called you 'daddy'?"

"That sounds so wrong… or so right. I haven't decided yet."

"-What's your game Uzumaki?" Harribel interjected sharply, interrupting the cheeky byplay of sensei and student. The dark-skinned Arrancar sat up from her back on the sand. She noticed that the released form of her Zanpakutou was right next to Naruto, far out of her reach, "You don't honestly believe that I owe you anything because of this, do you?"

"My game is; Ichimaru Gin ran his Shikai through your chest to try and take me out just because he saw the opening. And that's it," Naruto said before clapping his hands once, "Game over. Do you want to play again?"

"You're a dick Naruto-sensei," Tatsuki pointed out, laughing at how blunt and sarcastic he happened to sound right then, "You two were trying to kill each other an hour ago, what did you expect her to be like afterwards?"

"I'm just saying, I dumped tons of chakra trying to keep her alive long enough for Nel to do her thing, and do we get a 'thank you' or something?" Naruto asked rhetorically, "Nooooo, not from the mighty Tres Espada, who's too good to accept some goodwill from a handsome, sexy, true sage of the ages. I'm just a peaceful man with bad intentions. Why do I have to have an ulterior motive for something?"

Nelliel managed to ignore the banter between the two humans for the most part, in exchange ensuring that she had Harribel's full and undivided attention, "You're not going to go back to him are you?" She asked, "Aizen. After this?"

"Ichimaru stabbed me, not Aizen-sama."

"He wouldn't have done that if Aizen wouldn't have allowed it," Nelliel said, "…The same goes for what happened to me. Szayel Aporro and Nnoitra wouldn't have ever tried what they did against me and my Fracción had they known it would have put them on Aizen's bad side. If you're not all-useful to his plans, you're useless to him. Your use ended when Naruto proved he was head and shoulders better than you."

"I've always been loyal to him," Harribel reasoned, "Even when you were still within our ranks of Espada."

"And now that he knows you can be beaten after going all out, you're damaged goods," Nelliel responded without missing a beat, "He. Doesn't. Care."

"So I should just join the other side with my tail between my legs?" The dark-skinned blonde asked coolly, "Is that my next course of action? To side with the enemy and fight for them because of one show of kindness after I've spent years fighting for another cause?"

"Personally, you can do whatever the hell you want to."

That outright statement let the two women know that Naruto hadn't just been butting heads with his high school student of an apprentice. He'd been listening to their conversation from start to finish, and he'd finally chosen his moment to let his actions be clear.

"I didn't want to save you because I thought you'd join us," Naruto explained earnestly, with a shrug, "I saved you because you got the raw end of that deal. Ask Nel, ask anybody. You can walk away and never look at me again if you want to."

There was a touch of bitterness to his tone at the tail end of his statement that Tatsuki picked up on.

That Yoshino woman, the Bount, she was so bitter at Naruto that even after that whole Bount incident ended she was willing to simply leave without even trying to hash things out or see if anything still stood between them. She blamed him for everything that had happened to fracture their relationship centuries ago, and she wasn't willing to hang around and work around it despite literally having nowhere else to go.

Naruto could hide it with jokes and infuriating antics all he wanted. Having that happen the way that it did, along with everything else he'd learned during the encounter with the Bounts, it still stung at him. Things like that hurt him. Having people that he liked see him as the enemy, it killed him.

He forced Tatsuki to meditate intensely to a religious degree. At the start of every training session, for half an hour when she woke up in the morning, and for half an hour before she went to sleep at night. He wanted her hypersensitive to subtle things like energies of all sorts, or shifts of emotion, and she could feel the negative ones coming from her teacher.

"All you owe me is one thing," Naruto said, pointing straight at Harribel, "I want you to look at what's happened today and since you started fighting for Aizen, and I want you to look at it with a real sense of morality, not that Hollow 'you-do-whatever-you-want-because-you're-powerful' kind of crap. What good would really come from Aizen destroying reality if he killed the Spirit King?"

"What?" She couldn't believe what she was hearing, "You're just going to let me go?"

"You don't hurt innocents," Naruto said, pasting on a cheesy grin, "If being strong by itself is a crime I'd have gotten the noose, the axe, the chair, whatever execution of the era you want to use," Tatsuki slugged him in the arm to try and curb the outburst of ego, to little effect, "So do whatever you want to. You can do your own thing in the Human World like I think Nel is going to do after she pays off this little debt to me and Urahara she insists she has, hell, you can walk the two days it'll take you to get back to Las Noches and keep fighting for Aizen if you want to."

Nelliel stiffened, and even Tatsuki looked at Naruto as if he'd grown another head. He had the third strongest Arrancar underling in Aizen's army at his mercy, and he was going to let her go, just like that? He could have at least detained her back at Mother Base somehow, made her a live-in prisoner or something.

Harribel fixed Naruto with an unreadable glance behind her messy blonde locks, "…Why?"

"Because going back is your choice…" Naruto said cryptically. He tapped his own temple and left it at that.

Nelliel let a soft smile grace her features that went unseen by her replacement as the Tres Espada, 'Even if she goes back and continues on in Aizen's employ, the seed has been planted already. Both in her head and in Aizen's.'

After this betrayal, Harribel would never be able to have anything resembling full trust in Aizen Sousuke ever again.

Between Kyoka Suigetsu's abilities, what she already knew Aizen would have had done to Nelliel for refusing to rejoin, after having had Gin's Zanpakutou stab her through the back, and after everything Naruto had been saying to her during their various encounters she would never be as effective a soldier as she had been before this battle.

For Aizen, even though Naruto had literally done nothing to turn Harribel against him, the fact that he let her go would be enough to stick in his mind as well. At first because of the usual tactical actions of Uzumaki Naruto, Aizen would believe that it was some sort of foolish show of mercy, his allowing Harribel to leave, and it was. But he would quickly begin to overthink things after letting her back in.

He would never let it show, he would never let any crack permeate his perfect control of every situation, but allowing Harribel back would be a risk that would be inexcusable in his risk-free view of how every battle should be fought and every measure should be taken.

Naruto would have had to have done _something_ before cutting her loose. This would permeate his every thought when it came to his Tres Espada.

It would eat at him until he did something rash, one way or another. If the something rash was done to Harribel, it would without a doubt weaken his army and cause dissension in the ranks. It might have been a bit of a cold dismissal of the woman's fate, but after giving her the choice, if Harribel went back to Aizen after everything that had happened there was really nothing else Naruto could do for her anyway.

Damn it… that was good.

Naruto had a tendency to come off as a quirk-filled spaz that had driven himself insane with his long-lasting life. It was times like these however; moments of stark realization that indoctrinated all newer people to the group such as Nelliel to the fact Uzumaki Naruto was a dangerous, dangerous entity for more reasons than just his power, and there was nothing insane about the things that he did.

She doubted he'd even tried to set the situation up the way that he had beforehand, but in a short matter of time to think with he'd gotten his ducks in a row to ensure that Harribel would soften Aizen's forces some way no matter what she did, even if she went back to join them.

It was true, she was being given a choice.

It was just that no matter which choice she made, there wouldn't be any negative fallout set on Equilibrium. How many go-arounds in life did he need to all of that out? How many people did you have to meet and interact with for something like that to become second nature to the degree that you didn't even notice you were doing it?

"_Whatever you say. I'm not Criss Angel, here to mind-freak you for my own amusement."_

For his own amusement? No. But that didn't mean he wasn't still screwing with the heads of others, and it didn't mean that he wasn't damn good at it.

XxX

(With Gaara)

Kensei was admittedly feeling very antsy, watching Gaara do battle with Ulquiorra. He wanted a piece of that fight like no one's business. It was times like this when he wondered just what the general human population would do, how they would react, if they ever learned that things like this ever occurred.

It then occurred to him that he hadn't cared for the last hundred years plus, so what the hell did it matter now?

A sharp crack filled the air, followed by a booming crash of air that blew what seemed like half of the desert right into Kensei's face. He merely spat out sand and brushed it free from his hair, grousing to himself, "I hate goddamn sand."

BOOM!

He was then met with another bountiful mouthful for his troubles.

In the air, Ulquiorra was at wit's end.

Every time he managed to get close enough to Gaara to strike him, he would disappear into nothing but sand. His body wasn't made of sand, this Ulquiorra knew. He'd made contact with him. He'd torn him apart with a distance attack. Gaara was still flesh and blood.

"Do you understand yet?" Gaara asked, the sand swirling around his body in a cataclysmic torrent, independent of his own movements and actions, "I won't say anything as cliché as 'you have no chance of winning', but until you look beyond what you can see, you will never find the correct way to defeat me."

"Always with understanding this or that," Ulquiorra said, forming a javelin from sickly green energy, "The concept of understanding anything beyond strength or what we can see and feel firsthand is worthless to you and I as Hollows. Lanza del Relámpago (Lance of Thunder and Lightning)."

Gaara's body fell apart to sand as he saw the familiar attack that tore him asunder form at the ends of Ulquiorra's hands, "You won't touch me with that attack again. I won't give you the space to throw it."

"I don't need to throw it to use it," Ulquiorra said, twisting the energy weapon around and swinging it at Gaara with ill intent, "I'm afraid I'm not so one-dimensional in my attack."

"Likewise," Gaara said with a ghost of a smile as his body was cut clean into gory segments. But as it occurred, he simply reformed. Seeing this coming, Ulquiorra, moved in a swift Sonido, directly above Gaara, stabbing down with his tail to the turban-covered crown of his adversary.

Gaara moved his head out of the way before reaching up and grabbing the Lanza del Relámpago with his own hands.

Ulquiorra's eyes went wide at what Gaara was attempting to do, feeling it when the already unstable power in the weapon grew even more after being introduced to Gaara's, "This will backfire on the both of us," This did not prompt Gaara to let go, despite the damage being done to his gauntlet-covered hands.

Going off of the experience of the battle thus far, Gaara cared little if his own body was damaged in some way, because it always seemed to reform, even when his head was severed. No Arrancar could boast that sort of regenerative ability. No Hollow could either.

On the other hand, Ulquiorra knew the limits of his own ability to heal, and he had no intentions on pushing them in order to prove some sort of point to his enemy.

Letting the Lanza fade, his tail wrapped around Gaara's arm as he aimed his hand right in Gaara's face, a Cero Oscuras pointed right at him, "The secret to defeating you wouldn't happen to be obliterating every trace of your existence in one blow would it?" -Because that seemed to solve most problems.

SQUICK!

Looking down, Ulquiorra saw a clawed, gauntleted hand easily pushing its way through his body, no resistance being given whatsoever. He hadn't been hit. The best word for it would have been poked, or nudged. But that was impossible. With his Hierro it would have taken something catastrophically powerful to do such a thing to him.

He doubted Gaara had put any power behind that attack at all to keep it concealed until it was too late.

The Gaara in front of him that he had been fighting vanished into sand, "Impossible. You barely *cough* pressed into me at all."

"My sand eats away at _everything_," Gaara said, arm buried past the elbow through Ulquiorra's chest, "Everything in Hueco Mundo is comprised of Reishi. I told you, my presence turned everything around my Resurrección to sand, and that sand, imbued with my Reiryoku, ate everything else to sand alike."

Ulquiorra choked through the arm through his chest to "Y-You're rambling," Cold until the end it seemed. No fear of death was present there.

"My apologies," Gaara said earnestly, "As briefly as possible then. Even if I don't use it to attack directly, even if my sand doesn't touch you, no matter how powerful you are, my Resurrección wears on your body itself. There is no defense. Even if you were stronger than me and could outlast me in a true battle of attrition, the fight lasted too long. Your Hierro is worthless, even with the level of Reiatsu you possess. Your body is as fragile as a newborn human baby's."

Which was why Gaara had been able to push his hand right through Ulquiorra's body as if it were made of pre-cut wet paper.

What a terrifying power. The ability to weaken any enemy's durability, no matter how much stronger than him they potentially could have been, simply by being around them in his Resurrección. Even if you defeated Gaara in his Resurrección, if the battle lasted too long, it would take nothing short of regeneration or expert healing to return your body to normal.

And Ulquiorra had never known what was happening. Gaara had never hit him to test his Hierro after releasing his Zanpakutou.

"I've learned the secret of your power…" Ulquiorra said, grunting as he felt Gaara run his other hand through the already present wound. He wasn't letting him regenerate, not that it mattered since his organs were toast, "…A bit too late I'm afraid."

"You were a worthy opponent," Gaara said to him before pulling his hands apart, tearing Ulquiorra in half in a bloody mess. The two parts and everything within fell down to the ground to be buried beneath the wildly shifting sands, "…But you didn't discover the actual secret to my power. If you had, you would have actually forced me to waste great amounts of my energy actively defending myself instead of just using it to wear you down."

If Ulquiorra had chosen to rely on more than his senses that allowed him to perceive concrete things, he might have had a chance to figure things out. But he didn't, because he simply didn't accept the concept of things beyond what his eye could perceive.

XxX

On the ground, Kensei walked over to Ulquiorra's upper half and stood over the downed Arrancar, simply staring down at the motionless being. There was still life in his eyes as he stared straight up at the sky.

"So," Kensei said, making conversation, "You're not regenerating?"

"Any regeneration would be for nothing more than show," Ulquiorra said, "I can't regenerate my organs, so while my body might be fixed, there would be nothing vital within," There was a dispassionate acceptance to his fate resting within his words, "I was killed by a Hollow who wishes to be human."

Kensei shook his head, "You fought like a fool. As long as you were in this desert you were never going to defeat him the way you were fighting. That would have only worked somewhere else with a set amount of sand. He even told you the only way he knew of to defeat himself in a place like this, and it went straight over your head."

Ulquiorra's eyes widened, but returned to normal size once he felt his body begin to turn to ash, "It seems that this revelation will go unheard."

In a matter of seconds he was gone, his remains spread out amongst the vast sands.

That was just the way it was sometimes, Kensei figured. Some people didn't learn their lessons until it was too late to do anything about them. For some reason it was kind of refreshing to know that it didn't happen only to Shinigami.

Looking up in the sky, he frowned to himself at the sight of nothing. Gaara had vanished, and along with him, the desert that had been reacting to his mere presence had settled once more to the calm, desolate wasteland it had been before.

"Tch," Kensei scoffed, turning to head back to where he remembered leaving Naruto and company, "I hate all of this anyway."

XxX

Something about Gaara's Reiatsu disappearing during a clash with such a strong opposing force was disconcerting. There was no way in hell someone with Gaara's strength could ever completely hide himself from someone that knew what they were looking for. Ichigo couldn't steer Bawabawa fast enough for his tastes.

Even though Gaara was an Arrancar, he was a mostly peaceful Arrancar. Even though he was Naruto's friend, by Ichigo's count he was far more tolerable than Naruto. He was the straight man to his over-the-top friend from a bygone era.

Thinking about him being killed in a fight pissed Ichigo off more than he cared to think about. He'd trained with Chad to make him strong. He was a good person and something of a friend.

When he got over there he was going to… do nothing, because Gaara appeared right in front of him, wearing nothing but the battle-damaged pants he'd been wearing before Ulquiorra forced him into his Resurrección. He didn't seem to care too much about his state of attire.

"Ichigo," Gaara droned before catching sight of the giant sand worm and the Bount sitting on its back as well, "Koga as well."

"Gaara!" Ichigo said in surprise before looking over in the direction where he'd felt Gaara's energy running rampant not too long ago, "Err, were you fighting?"

"Yes."

Waiting on Gaara to elaborate, but receiving nothing more in terms of information, Ichigo furrowed his brow at the red-haired Arrancar, "And?"

"It's over now," Gaara wasn't much of a dynamic storyteller when he didn't have a point to make. With a swing of his arm, he carved a Garganta into the sky and pointed to it, "Time to go home."

"But… what about taking down Aizen?" Ichigo asked with a blank stare.

"They intercepted us. It wouldn't be wise to attempt anything with what we currently have available to us."

"…And?"

Gaara stared at him until it became uncomfortable for Ichigo to bear, and for good reason. He could understand wanting to continue on. Well, not right then because he was tired as hell, but some other time he would have understood on an emotional level. Not on a pragmatic level though. There simply was no benefit to trying to sack a stronghold the size of Las Noches, still needing more than one day to get there, after they'd already been in big battles.

Equilibrium was meant for smaller incidents and smaller operations that could be handled with smaller numbers, quality over quantity, not for full-scale wars. Did he understand nothing about small-unit tactics? Actually, how much about tactics did Ichigo understand outside of what to do in an actual fight that he himself was involved in?

Once again, Gaara pointed up at the open Garganta with emphasis, leaving no room for argument. Somehow, even after having been run ragged, he was still imposing enough with his stoic demeanor to prompt Ichigo to accept. Not without audible griping as he hefted up Bawabawa to leave.

"If we're not doing something and the Seireitei isn't doing something, who will?"

Sometimes the young did have their moments of philosophical clarity.

Gaara sighed and closed his eyes as he watched Ichigo go up to fly through the portal. He had a very good point, something that the normally strong and silent Koga pointed out, "The people with the resources and manpower to make a difference in this war don't have the knowledge and freedom, and the people that have the knowledge and freedom don't have the resources or manpower."

Putting a hand on the Bount's shoulder, Gaara took him up into the air with his ability to fly, "It's strange how that oftentimes seems to be the case."

Not funny though. There was never anything funny to be taken from situations like war.

XxX

"…So what do you think?" Gin said in conclusion to his leader as he finished giving his firsthand report of everything that he'd seen, from Tousen's death at the hands of Ichigo, to Naruto's defeat of Harribel, "It's interesting, right?"

Tousen hadn't been much more than a powerful soldier who believed enough in his cause of justice to be easily swayed. All Aizen ever had to do was reason to him that any 'God' that would allow the things that happened to his Shinigami friend to occur was not a God that needed to exist.

The man had been simple despite his eloquence and single-minded to an absurd degree. Articulacy did not always translate into actual intelligence. He wasn't like Gin. Gin for the time being was invaluable and irreplaceable.

The loss of Tousen's power barely concerned Aizen. The power wasn't much of an issue. Aizen could easily deal with every captain of the Gotei 13, and the only one that he took pause at fighting against, he had a plan for.

No, his interest rested with something else, the most intriguing portion of Gin's report to him. A strange figure who seemed to be demanding more and more of Aizen's attention, as he was a factor that had not been planned for the way all the others had been.

A man that had come out of nowhere at the back-end of his plans coming to fruition. Uzumaki Naruto.

"With every use of that black energy, he comes closer to losing control of it entirely," Aizen said, a calm smile on his face, "What sheer force of will it must have taken for him to hold such a thing back for as long as he has. He's an interesting man."

Gin's smile stretched further across his face than it usually did as he caught on to his leader's line of thinking, "You seriously ain't thinking about makin' him have a little accident are you?"

Rest assured, it would be no accident.

"It would be quite the shame if he lost himself for even a moment," Aizen replied rhetorically, "His relationship with the Seireitei is precarious at best. Yamamoto would err on the side of caution and exterminate him should he seem to be a danger to either the Human World or to the Soul Society. It's simply the way he is to everything. No tolerance. No risks."

He knew just how cold the captain-commander could be. The old man could order Naruto killed if need be, and it would mean absolutely nothing to him. He'd done it time and time again. The Quincy race. The Visoreds. Over the last 2000 years Yamamoto had earned his title as the strongest, and it hadn't been maintained through acts of mercy and understanding.

It wouldn't take much at all to set him upon such a rogue element that he could not control, especially one that had successfully taken the fight to the doorstep of the Seireitei once already.

He had managed to grab the allegiance (for the most part) of not only the Substitute Shinigami whom they'd given such a title to in order to establish some sort of control over him, but also several exiled formerly high-ranking members of the Seireitei military system. He was protecting multiple Arrancar allies, all of whom would not have been seen as separate from Hollows, and a Bount, a race that had been slated to be exterminated long ago. He even had a Quincy who routinely expressed that he had an axe to grind against the Shinigami race.

It was no matter if he was the enemy of the Seireitei's enemy, he was stirring up trouble on the horizon all on his own.

If anything, Yamamoto was simply waiting for a half-decent reason to send in the cleanup crew and get rid of Naruto before he actually did become a problem.

"Far be it from me to cross the line of good taste," Aizen said calmly, "But I think it would be in our best interests to prompt such a butting of heads. Our enemies are presenting a unified front, but all it takes to break such a flimsy bond is the right leverage."

"Yammy's been dispatched already, but are you sure?" Gin asked concernedly, "Zommari won't be able to control him well enough for them to be subtle."

"It's not exactly a subtle task."

"So it's something he's perfect for."

"Exactly."

There was nothing tactical about this. The thing about strategy was that sometimes, being blunt and violent was the best course of action. Yammy was an idiot and was only good for blunt and violent courses of action.

Yes, sometimes when the chess game was getting too heated, it was for the best to flip the board.

* * *

**Okay guys, so I can't apologize enough for how long it took to put this out, but I think my laptop dying, taking along with it most of the already written chapter AND every single note I had on the path of this story, is a pretty decent excuse. Even so, I had to keep going, because I remembered what I wanted to do with it and the gist of where I wanted it to go.**

…**And I had to give you a taste of Gaara's Resurrección. Seriously, I really didn't mean to leave the story up in the air for so long right at that part. That was just bad luck.**

**So anyway, you got the basics of Gaara's true power with a hidden facet to it. I hope it was for the most part understandable. Next time, homefront character interaction is going down, other stuff involving Uryuu, and what is Yammy going to be used for?**

**Okay, I have a sweet Assistant Producer job to get trained for in the morning, so I'm going to leave it at this. For fans of this story I swear it's not going to be left alone this long again. It's just a bitch to rewrite something that you already wrote and then lost.**

**I hope you enjoyed. Happy New Year. Kenchi out.**


	34. Trust Fall

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach. Tite Kubo apparently creates characters when he's bored. Well that certainly explains a whole fucking lot, doesn't it? So many things make sense now.

**Chapter 34: Trust Fall**

* * *

"Sensei, you SUCK!"

"Hush girl, this is a very important part of my training!"

"You stole this from an anime, but I can't remember which one!"

"Balance, woman!" Naruto barked, sitting in lotus position on the bottoms of Tatsuki's feet as she held herself upside down with one finger on a spike, using nothing more than the density of her chakra to keep from impaling the appendage and falling on her head, "Homestretch here!"

"I… hate you… soooo much," Tatsuki grunted out between her clenched teeth. She couldn't have been more covered in sweat if she'd been running on a treadmill in a sauna, while holding a bad hand during the finale of the World Series of Poker.

This exercise was the hardest thing he had made her do by far, which was saying quite a lot. It was absolutely awful; spiritually and physically draining. Before they had begun, she hadn't even known she could get so tired. The only reason she wasn't crying was because she'd run out of tears after the fourth hour. And this time the training was taking place inside of Naruto's office/living quarters, which meant none of her more sentimental friends like Ichigo or Orihime could get on his case about how hard he was pushing her.

"Stop talking! Talking breaks your concentration!" Naruto shouted at her before turning his attention to Yoruichi, "So yeah, anyway, you were the head of those Onmitsukidou guys 100 years ago weren't you? How would you get into Las Noches? Because unless I want to fight enough battles to wake up he-who-shall-not-be-named, we ain't going through the front door."

"-And it's not like Yamamoto likes you enough to dedicate a strong enough attack force of seated officers to fight our way in," Yoruichi said, shrugging in return to the question from her lover, "But if I knew how to sneak up on Aizen, we wouldn't be having this conversation. I would have nipped this in the bud back in the Seireitei. In this instance, I think your habit of picking up strays might have actually been the best thing you could have done for us."

"Okay, first of all, I resent you calling Harribel a stray. Second of all; with that logic, you, Tatsuki-chan and a bunch of others are all strays. And Tatsuki is most definitely NOT a stray. She's a unique, beautiful, hardworking snowflake who's gonna carry down the secrets of chak-," He ceased in his praise to outright threaten his student, "I swear to Kami, if you stop I'll make you start the whole twelve hours over again!"

"So you're implying that I'm a stray?" Yoruichi asked him in a tone of voice that told him that the wrong answer would result in Naruto not getting any for the foreseeable future.

Naruto would not admit that he was wrong, or take back anything that he ever said under any circumstances, and if there was anything reliable about his relationship with Yoruichi it was that any disagreements they had could be handled on the battlefield with no ill feelings.

Still, no lovin' from Yoruichi for any extended period of time did not a happy shinobi make.

"Uh, you're _my_ stray," Naruto said, realizing he was digging himself a deeper hole than if he'd have just challenged her face-to-face, "By stray, I mean my sexy, talented, righteous, amazing Yoruichi. See? S.T.R.A.Y."

Hooray for makeshift acronyms. They could make anything seem less offensive than they really were. Or more so, depending on their use.

Yoruichi just stared long and hard at him in silence, the only sounds in the room being Tatsuki's quiet sounds of effort in keeping herself and Naruto up in the air, "…That was so awful, just the embarrassment you put yourself through saying that out loud was enough for me to let you off of the hook."

So… pity for a lame pick-up, "I'll take it," As long as he wasn't cut off from any action, "Where are Uryuu and Chad?"

The dark-skinned Shinigami woman grinned at the topic of the human and Quincy Equilibrium employees, "Why, working one of the assignments we had piling up in Soul Society of course. All of this fighting Aizen pro bono crap is for the birds."

"The business side is your thing, so you do whatever you think is good for us," Naruto said, effectively placing the day-to-day operation of the organization in her hands. Why not? She'd done a marvelous job so far, "By the way, twelve hours is up Tatsuki-chan."

"G-Good!" Tatsuki shouted, finding a sudden surge of energy as she kicked Naruto off of her feet and shot herself into the air with a burst of her chakra, "I've been waiting twelve hours to kick your ass!" She hurled herself through the air at him, and just as his feet touched the ground she landed the most satisfying punch she'd ever hit anyone with; because it was aimed at Naruto and it actually made contact.

Yoruichi raised an eyebrow at just how solid the punch had been. All Naruto had done to prepare was shut his eyes. Yoruichi herself was a Hakuda master, so if anyone knew about good hand-to-hand ability, it was Yoruichi.

'That would have really hurt someone,' Yoruichi thought. Tatsuki was getting _strong_.

But this was Naruto she was hitting. And other than his head turning from the force of the punch and his cheek bruising up underneath her fist, it didn't even register on his face that Tatsuki had slugged him, "There. You see how much power you still have when you're pissed?"

Tatsuki backed away and looked down at her fist. After her fist hand sunken into the skin of Naruto's cheek it had been like punching Wolverine's adamantine skeleton; no give whatsoever, "…Nothing? Really?"

"Oh, it hurt," Naruto admitted, grinning with his eyes closed, "But I'll be damned if I'll ever let you know how much. The fact that you think can't hurt me is a big chunk of the reason you listen to the crazy shit I say. Now hurry and hop your cute little ass in the tub to clean up," Naruto said, pointing to his attached bathroom, "I'll get you a change of clothes."

Tatsuki just glared at him in return, "Why a bath instead of a shower, and why in your bathroom?"

"Because you won't make it anywhere else before your legs figure out how tired you really are."

"Huh?" He was kidding wasn't he? Tatsuki felt great. Better than she'd ever felt in her entire life… and then she suddenly didn't. She _really_ didn't. It took Yoruichi's quick actions in holding her up to keep her standing, "Whoa. What the hell?"

"Good job. You know what it feels like to force past what your brain and body says are your limits, so you can open at least Gate One of Eight from here on out," Naruto said with a golf clap, "Congratulations, you just learned a kinjutsu. Now don't ever do it again unless something's about to kill you."

And he couldn't have told her that this was all to teach her a new technique instead of being a sadistic taskmaster? He had cleared away an entire day of his schedule to make sure she either broke through or broke altogether.

It showed all over her face, leaving Naruto to explain. He figured that just doing the jutsu once and feeling what the results of it were after the fact would be enough, but apparently not.

"Okay, look. Eight Gates, they're like limiters for what your body is really capable of. They're in place to keep you from overworking your body and burning yourself out permanently, but you can push past them," Naruto counted them off as he tapped her in two places on her head and then down Tatsuki's body, eyes still closed, "They give you huge boosts of power for a few seconds until they close again, but the more you use at once, the worse you mess yourself up. Look at yourself. That was after opening one gate."

"So that was what that was," Yoruichi finally realized. She felt the sudden power of Tatsuki's shoot through even what her original reserves had been at the start of Naruto's exercise, "That's a brutal way of bringing up a second wind. I could feel something force open inside of her."

Nodding at Yoruichi's understanding, Naruto continued his explanation, "Depending on how strong you are when you actually open them all, there's a chance, an itty-bitty one, totally miniscule mind you, that you end up stronger than me," Tatsuki's eyes shone in consideration. If it was just damage she'd do to her own body to finally kick her sensei's ass the way he deserved, she could deal with that. She'd just have to open all of the stupid gates, "...Too bad you die right after you do it."

Yoruichi shook her head with a smile at Tatsuki's unsaid, but clearly evident teenage exuberance at sticking it to authority getting shut down, "You really thought a technique was out there that would magically boost you past someone like Naruto?"

"Ichigo's stupid Bankai and his Hollow mask make him stronger than those Espada, so yeah, I kind of did," Tatsuki said with a sigh, "This is one of those 'trust your judgment' things, isn't it?"

"No, it's a 'don't ever do it unless you're fighting somebody you know'll tear you limb-from-limb' thing," Naruto said, pinching Tatsuki's cheek, knowing that she couldn't hit him again as she was, "Seriously, don't play around with this crap. I don't even use these things myself. It was never worth it."

Mostly because he never had to in order to get a boost of power, but partially because even though his gates would stay open for longer than the first people who showed him the technique would, they would still leave him drained beyond use in the end. It wasn't worth it for him when he could generate more useful power without a kinjutsu.

Speaking of which, when Yoruichi helped Tatsuki slowly walk off to get herself washed up, Naruto sighed and opened his eyes to reveal toad-like irises just as orange pigment appeared around the edges of them. If Tatsuki had wailed on him with that punch when he _hadn't_ had Sage Mode ready… well the experience of watching her learn about the Gates would have been way less pleasant.

Was it wrong that he wanted to see just how much she could take on before needing to take a step back chakra-wise? It didn't matter how big or unwieldy the ball that he'd hand off to her was. She'd take it, run with it, and slam dunk it right in his face, waving the middle finger at him the entire time, which was annoying. Naruto could see why people disliked it when he was young, but simultaneously he loved it.

Really, he hadn't had to teach Tatsuki how to fight. She'd already known how to on an extremely high level before he'd ever gotten a hold of her. It had only been a matter of having her adjust to fighting the supernatural, and with the abundance of different examples he had roaming the halls of Mother Base she had plenty of opponents to spar with for experience, so taijutsu was handled.

He didn't have to give her much on stealth. Tatsuki didn't take a shine to it in the first place, and Yoruichi handled it herself when she was bored. He found that out by trying to teach Tatsuki on his own and finding that she already knew the gist of what he was going to show her. It would never fail that when he did, Yoruichi would saunter past with a saucy grin on her face from fucking up his lesson plan.

And genjutsu? Pfft…

So it came down to making sure she knew what she was doing with what she was strongest at. The only way he knew how to do that was the same way he'd been taught, by being thrown into the fire firsthand.

This in mind, he brainlessly walked into the next room that he'd dispatched his student and his beau into. It seemed that they'd just settled themselves into the hot water of the tub when he'd come barging in. Yoruichi couldn't have cared less that he was looking at her naked, for obvious reasons. Tatsuki on the other hand was mortified.

"Naruto-sensei! Out!" One would think that locking the door would have been the first thing she'd thought of when using the bathroom in someone else's living quarters when she'd just had an issue with it barely five minutes prior. As if that would have actually stopped him.

Naruto simply stared at her nonplussed for several seconds, "You don't have anything I haven't seen a hundred-thousand times before," As if he hadn't been alive for the better part of two millennia. Still, even so… "…Good on you though."

Tatsuki's subsequent sliding down to her neck in the water didn't seem low enough for her tastes.

"Anyway," Naruto turned his attention to Yoruichi as she casually forced him to revise his internal definition on the merits of buoyancy, "How far along are Chad and Uryuu with their mission?"

"They just checked in at Kuukaku's house before I came," Yoruichi told him, relaxing herself in the hot water, "She moved again by the way."

Really? Well that was intriguing. The wheels were already turning inside of Naruto's head, "If I sent Tatsuki-chan first thing in the morning could she catch up with them?"

Yoruichi smiled, seeing where he was going without him needing to even tell her, "I don't see why not. I can send a Hell Butterfly tonight and tell her to hold them until she gets there."

"Wait," Tatsuki said with a grumble. They were speaking as if they were two adults talking about plans for their child. It was rather demeaning. Also, she was still naked in front of her teacher. This was also demeaning, "Are you actually sending me on a mission?"

"You killed Grand Fisher and I hear you fought against a lieutenant," Yoruichi said, kicking her leg to splash some water Tatsuki's way, "If you can do those things and we're not using you on missions by now we're either missing the boat, or someone's a little overprotective," She finished with a leer in Naruto's direction.

Naruto got onto his knees and leaned against the edge of the tub as he looked over at Tatsuki, "Well, in the end it's all up to you. I can't really make you take missions that I won't be there for."

"…So you _won't _be there? It'll just be a job?" Tatsuki asked carefully, getting a nod from Naruto, "…As in you _won't _turn it all into some horrifying exercise that they wouldn't make prisoners do on some kind of death march?" This time she received a shake of the head, "Oh yeah, I'm in."

"Aww… letting your baby bird leave the nest," Yoruichi cooed, stroking underneath Naruto's chin, "If you're skipping the overprotective father phase, I suppose I won't get to go through the enabling mother phase."

"Can we get to the 'kids are out of the house so we can have sex everywhere' phase, then?"

Tatsuki pretended that she wasn't present for this portion of the conversation.

XxX

(Soul Society – Seireitei - 1st Division Headquarters – Captains' Assembly Hall)

Once all of his captains had made themselves present, it was time to begin the meeting. With a great rumble from the back of his throat, Yamamoto rose from his seat in the great, empty hall and stood before his Shinigami, eyes roaming over the remaining leaders of the Gotei 13. They were still down three captains after the defection of Aizen, Ichimaru, and Tousen Kaname, the latter of whom now lay deceased at the hands of Karakura Town's Substitute Shinigami. But this wasn't exactly a gathering made with the intent to hash out the way to distribute their current forces.

It was hard to prepare for an eventual final encounter of a conflict when the circumstances surrounding it kept changing. Instead of dealing with a drawn-out war meant to last months, if not years, Yamamoto preferred dealing with things in one fell swoop.

A battle to end everything at once. Quick. No loose ends. But it wasn't looking to be likely to happen.

Yamamoto had been building his forces, having his top-seated officers prepare for such a fight. He was trying to anticipate Aizen's move on Karakura Town, the only place where he would bother making his move. But every time that other group did anything against Aizen, independent of the Seireitei's wishes for the way they handled their missions.

The veteran Shinigami captain knew that he couldn't control such a unit, but he figured he could guide them with compromise. Apparently not so. Uzumaki had gotten into more battles with the enemy than the Gotei 13 had. Reconnaissance missions turned into conflicts, despite the parameters set by

Aside from that, a part of him felt like Naruto was only humoring him by taking their requested assignments in the first place. As if he didn't need their money, and only agreed because he was going make some sort of move against the enemy regardless. He doubted the man really needed the money he was paid. From what they knew of him, his resources were vast, having been stockpiled in various forms throughout the eras.

Honestly, he was an ally, but only because there was someone out there who was an actual threat to existence as a whole. Had this not been the case, there was a fair chance that Naruto would have found himself at the top of the supernatural shit list.

"I've called you all here today to check on the status of our preparations for the coming battle with the Arrancar," Yamamoto said, his wizened old voice booming throughout the great hall he had gathered the remaining captains of the Gotei 13 in, "But also to inform you of the standing of an outside party. The man called Uzumaki. We may have to deal with him in the near future."

"Why would we have to deal with Uzumaki-san?" Ukitake asked, "He's actually doing damage to Aizen's Espada. He's made no hostile move against the Seireitei since the ruse that was engineered by Aizen. He's done nothing but fight this war on the front lines."

Yamamoto's stern eyes passed over his former student as he took in every word, "His actions are delaying Aizen's penultimate move. He is whittling away at our enemy and exposing more of their capabilities to us, yes, but he is ruining our approach to this war."

"Pssht, I like his style," Kenpachi said, his fingers drumming off the hilt of his sword, "He's actually fucking doing something instead of sitting on his ass at home while all the action is happening everywhere else."

Go to where the battle was, and fight it until one or none were left standing. Typical 11th Division attitude. Much more couldn't have been expected from their captain, who exemplified that outlook.

"Barbaric clod," Captain Komamura said from beneath the helmet that concealed his features, "Something like what you're implying takes preparation. Heading into Hueco Mundo half-cocked would get countless Shinigami killed."

He did not like that Naruto character. The fact that Yamamoto didn't necessarily consider him an ally that they could trust unconditionally, and the man's sway over the Substitute Shinigami Kurosaki Ichigo was enough of a reason for him. But he had run across Naruto once while he had been lingering in the Soul Society after the invasion of the Seireitei. He didn't rub him the right way.

His brazen methods which seemed to stir up the violent nature of Kenpachi, who was chomping at the bit to get himself a piece of the action, only seemed to further that mindset.

"What's there to prepare for? We go there, we cut off a few body parts," Kenpachi continued with his commonplace bloodthirsty grin on his scarred face, "There's your war," His simplified version of pitched combat actually got a snort out of Soi-Fon. Whether it was because of the arrogance behind such a statement, or the absolute travesty that would have passed for tactics in such a measure was unknown.

Hitsugaya rolled his eyes, his arms crossed as he sat and listened to everything being said by the berserk swordsman, "Asinine statement aside, I still don't see any reason to mistrust Uzumaki-san," Eccentricities aside, he wanted to put Aizen down, just like them. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and other than the initial odds that the Gotei 13 and Equilibrium had been at, they hadn't been a threat.

Kurotsuchi creeped Hitsugaya out more than Naruto ever had. The biggest problem was, the Equilibrium group was an outside entity that the Seireitei could not control. An ally one day could be an enemy the next. The examples were endless throughout recorded and unrecorded history. This was why it was so disconcerting to have such an organization exist, and during a time of war no less.

After all, no good could ever come from Ryoka.

XxX

(Human World – Karakura Town – Urahara Shop)

Naruto quite often visited Urahara Kisuke's place of business to powwow with the scientific mind. He was a highly important member of Equilibrium, and he was a pretty cool person to hang out with once you got past the fact that he absolutely lived for getting one over on everyone around him. Spending time around Urahara for any extended period of time was done at the risk of giving him some sort of advantage over you sometime in the future.

Thankfully, Naruto cared very little for that. When you lived for long enough, you learned to pick and choose the things that made you paranoid. All of that could be overlooked due to the fact that for some reason, the lot that Urahara's shop sat on got perhaps the best sun of any location in Karakura Town, and Naruto needed to keep his tan up, even if it was late fall.

That healthy coloring didn't just come from nowhere. Both of his parents were fair-skinned for goodness sake. Unfortunately, getting sun was boring, which was where Urahara came into play. He was always good for conversation.

"So, what's the haps with Old Man Yamamoto's stupid war? That still can't be happening," Naruto asked, tilting down his sunglasses to look at the shop's proprietor, sitting on the front porch of the shop out of the sun, fanning himself, "You know Aizen sees it coming from a mile away, right?"

"Not that I'm even doubting that as a possibility at all-," Urahara said with a grin, because he knew full well just how stubborn Yamamoto was. The old man believed so much in his own power that facing an enemy directly his wasn't just his first choice. It was his only choice. There was a reason Naruto had been able to run circles around the Onmitsukidou blindfolded after all. For a special ops squad, they didn't get much field work, "-But why do you think Aizen would necessarily have plans for it?"

Aside from the fact that Aizen Sousuke seemed to have plans for everything.

"I'm pretty sure if Aizen was in as deep as we think he was with all of his crap while he was still a captain, he knows the old guy would rather fight one battle instead of an actual war," Naruto said, and it made a measure of sense. A fight where Aizen would have to use all of his heavy-hitters to win. A battle where all of his cards would have to be lain out on the table for the Shinigami to see.

Such a course of action was not Naruto's cup of tea whatsoever. A fight like that would draw too many losses in too far short a time period. What actual winning strategy would go into that sort of fight? It would be nothing more than a battle royale. A fight where only the side with the absolute strongest would remain standing, and whoever wasn't would simply die on the battlefield.

If the Seireitei lost that battle, there wouldn't be anyone left to keep the Soul Society in one piece. Naruto had seen the results of such a battle before. One all-out, all-or-nothing showdown between two sides that weren't going to let the world last as it was any longer. A two-day battle that effectively ended his world as he knew it.

Sure, the Seireitei had thousands of unseated Shinigami in the multiple divisions of the Gotei 13, and more, but the previous invasion perpetrated by one former captain, a bunch of underprepared, albeit superpowered teenagers, and one immortal shinobi left them in enough of a wreck by itself, and they hadn't even been trying to do any lasting damage.

If even one or two of the Espada remained, it would have been a nigh insurmountable challenge for the lower-level Shinigami to face. Naruto wasn't the kind of person to say that someone could never defeat another, but he wouldn't have put any money on the entire Gotei 13, minus the actual power of that military, winning any sort of conflict with Aizen's forces.

If the Seireitei won, he wouldn't have put it past them to completely obliterate the losing side. They seemed to be good at that. Bounts, Mod Souls, Quincies, it looked to be their thing.

Let it be known that as the self-professed proprietor of balance, Naruto wasn't down with genocide in any way, shape, or form. Hollows existed for a reason, and all of them weren't mindless devourers of human souls. It was the primary reason he'd completely disassociated himself from the Soul Society altogether in quick fashion, because of what they had done to the Bounts, things that _they_ had created, and what that had forced them to do as a last resort. Because of what they had done to the Quincies as well. How much of that was the fault of the other side as well, Naruto didn't know, but it was the worst kind of extreme.

The afterlife only seemed to deal in extremes. At least as far as he had seen of it thus far. It made him really not want to die… even more than he normally didn't want to, of course.

Urahara knew enough of Naruto's background to realize that the idea of settling it all at once in a 'let the chips fall where they may' manner wasn't an idea he supported. Maybe years ago he would have, but after seeing what he had seen, he had no taste for it, "You think Aizen is anticipating a battle like that?"

"I know he is," Naruto muttered miserly. If someone like him could break it down, Aizen had probably counted on such a thing long before he had even defected from the Seireitei, "He has to be. If I can see it, he definitely can. And he'll fight it," Naruto told the resident mad genius, "…He'll probably win if too, if it comes down to it…"

"Why would you say that?"

"Yamamoto would just try to flat out smoosh him," There wouldn't be a single tactic other than 'Shinigami smash', and Naruto knew it. The complete lack of any sort of plan or method of dealing with _an invasion from six people_ proved that much, and they weren't the types to learn from past experience when it came to procedure, "Aizen would have an actual plan. He has an actual objective. His Espada and Arrancar are all pieces on a board, and he knows everything about both sides. That's why I've been trying to pick away at him. It's screwing up both sides so this bullshit doesn't happen."

Aizen couldn't feel comfortable with marching into Yamamoto's intended battle with every loss he wound up taking. He was down a few Espada now, so he had to keep planning, which was what Naruto wanted. It kept him from marching into Yamamoto's stupid, gigantic battle, which was also what Naruto wanted.

It wasn't that Naruto was against stupid, blunt action, it was his bread and butter after all. It was just that he wasn't for it when a LEADER was leading his entire command into that same stupid action and treating it like a real strategy. One could say what they wanted about Naruto, he had never dragged other people into his biggest idiot moments, of which he had many throughout recorded and unrecorded history.

If the world wanted to try and be diagonal, Naruto would affix himself as the balancing point, whether either side wanted it or not.

"I learned something from the infiltration to save Rukia that I'd already suspected when I left with the Visoreds. Something you had a part in teaching me actually," Urahara pointed out, "The Seireitei is awful at drawn out operations. If they can't pick a battleground and force a fight, they can't win. It's why they don't pursue fugitives very hard in the living world."

Yes. The Bounts, what was left of the Quincies, and more. If the Seireitei didn't take them down quickly, if the enemy went into deep hiding, they would leave them alone. Were it not for Naruto constantly sniping at him, all Aizen would really have had to do would have been absolutely nothing. Do nothing until the time came to start making his moves and then send his soldiers out in small parties to operate and get his affairs in order.

Sure, some of the ones like Grimmjow or Yammy would be positively awful at it, but that wasn't what one should have planned on using them for anyway. Instead, on several occasions, Aizen had used his Arrancar to test the waters, putting all of his enemies on constant alert instead of trying to go for the element of surprise. But why?

Thinking of a possible reason elicited a laugh from Urahara that he blocked behind his fan, "I think you forced his hand by showing that you had the ability to go back and forth to Hueco Mundo at will, and the stones to actually do it," His 'boss' was certainly an interesting factor in all of this, "He can't really plan to trap you because you, Gaara, and Hidan can leave whenever you feel the need to. As long as one of you are present on any mission and remain alive, there's nothing that can be done to stop the hit-and-runs."

"So he's scared of me?" Naruto asked, grinning at the thought of striking fear into an enemy. That was honestly a new feeling. No one was ever afraid of him in advance, "That's kind of cool."

"Not afraid," Urahara corrected, his eyes shadowed by the brim of his hat, "If nothing else, he's planning around you. And he's not happy about that. If you're right, and he was banking on making a move to counter Yamamoto's big battle for Karakura Town, you disrupted his work. He had to throw it out and make something new now."

His tone was grave, but none of this sounded particularly bad to Naruto. Still grinning he made a show of throwing his hands into the air before resting them behind his neck as he continued to lounge in the sun, "Yep. Just gonna lay here, and keep bein' awesome."

Normally, Urahara would have been all for breaking a tense moment with an attempt at humor, but not in this case, "You may have fended off one disaster, but set us on the path to another. I'm just saying, this one might be worse."

The former captain wasn't going to let him off the hook, and Naruto knew it. Sometimes circumstances around him really made him feel his age, and he really didn't feel like treating the world as though he were an old man.

"I know that Kisuke," Naruto said with a sigh, removing his sunglasses to stare directly into the sun, damage to his eyes be damned. At least he was still alive to feel the pain, unlike so many others, "But you can't think that way about these kinds of things."

Questioning your own course of action was the quickest way to finding oneself lost.

The unknown was more appealing than the alternative as far as Naruto was concerned, "You're right. We don't know what one of Aizen's alternatives will be," He conceded, "But I've got to hope that whatever it is will be a hell of a lot better than Yamamoto setting the table for the Shinigami and the Arrancar duke it out to the last man with every soul in Karakura Town as the grand prize. I've seen the way that fucking movie ends before, and personally, I'm not a goddamn fan of it."

An uncomfortable silence settled between the two before Naruto found things too awkward to remain as they were.

"Ugh. Too heavy," He said, shaking his head before sitting up in his lawn chair to turn and face Urahara, "Anyway, how's Harribel doing?"

"She wants to see her Fracción. Speak with them."

"She's going back to Aizen?"

"She won't say."

Naruto gave him a look, but he got nothing else out of Urahara than that. Realizing that his attempt to rest up to prepare for the next cluster of chaos was officially over, Naruto stood up and walked over to head inside to speak with Urahara's newest temporary guest, "Tch... where'd I put my clothes?"

"You know, between Nelliel and now Harribel, not that I don't love the caliber of the company you're bringing me these days, but I'm running out of room in my home," Urahara shouted to Naruto as the man disappeared inside of the shop, "This one doesn't seem as happy to stick around here as Nelliel was either."

"I'll talk to her!" Naruto hollered at him from where he was searching for his garments.

XxX

(Soul Society – South Rukongai – District #27 – Shiba Clan Home)

Traversing Soul Society for the first time by her lonesome was a little something of a task for Tatsuki to accomplish, seeing as how there was no public transportation and she was still getting adjusted to traveling on foot the way Naruto had taught her.

Naruto had given her a grey-colored flak vest made of the toughest material that could be fit between the fabric, an attempt to make sure that she was at the very least as protected as he could make her. She found that she couldn't stab through it with her trench knives, so the thought was appreciated. Instead of light, athletic shoes she decided to go in a pair of black all-terrain boots, and a pair of black shorts adorned her toned legs.

Being outfitted for trouble made her feel confident, even though she was traveling in the literal afterlife. And it lasted, right until she caught sight of the Shiba Clan home, in all of its flamboyance, and found herself confronted by the huge twin guards they kept in their employ.

Then the weird, out-of-place feeling that normally sat in the pit of her stomach on one of her supernatural excursions came right back, even as she was led through the house by the youngest of the Shibas.

Ganju didn't know exactly what to make of the girl. His sister's two guards let her right in, and it was up to him to show her around the place and find the people she had come to catch up with, "I've never seen you around before. I remember all of Ichigo's friends he came through here with when we hit up the Seireitei. You definitely weren't there."

The only women present back then had been Yoruichi, in cat form, and the cute one that healed things. Not this new one with the messy black hair and the poor mood hiding her nerves at being somewhere unfamiliar all alone. She wasn't hiding it particularly well.

"Uh, the first time my friends came here, I wasn't exactly in the loop," Tatsuki offered up as an excuse, rubbing her arm uncomfortably, "But Naruto-sensei signed off on me going with them on their mission, so it should be fine."

"Really now?" Kuukaku asked, the door to her office sliding open just as Ganju and Tatsuki walked past it. Sitting on the tatami mats inside, smoking her pipe, "Uzumaki's your sensei? Hah! I never figured that guy had enough brain cells to rub together to teach anyone."

Kuukaku did like Naruto. He was a friendly person, Yoruichi was taken with him, and he was a hell of a drinking buddy from the last few times he'd come around her neck of the woods. But she was an equal-opportunity chop-buster, and there were a ton of soft targets to aim at with Tatsuki's teacher.

Ganju snapped to attention at the suddenness of the door flying open, "Sis, this girl says she came to meet up with the two-."

"Ah, I heard it already Ganju," Kuukaku said, waving her brother's explanation off as she took to trying to size Tatsuki up, "...Tell you what. Go get the giant kid and the Quincy boy. Bring 'em here. They're supposed to be leaving today anyway."

Ganju nodded and hurried off, leaving Tatsuki alone with the one-armed woman. Kuukaku leered at Tatsuki with a smirk before lifting her hand and beckoning her to enter the room. Tatsuki clenched her jaw shut and walked up to her, the only thing separating the two of them being a low table.

Tatsuki had no idea how she was supposed to approach this. She hadn't planned on actually meeting this Shiba Kuukaku lady. She just figured she'd show up and then leave with Uryuu and Chad.

Kuukaku said nothing at first, just looking her over. A twirl of her finger indicating that she wanted Tatsuki to turn around got the young woman to do a short 360, where she was then subjected to more observation. Eventually, after taking another breath of her pipe, she spoke up, "So I'm assuming that you're pretty damn good. I don't see a butterfly-chaser like Uzumaki having the patience to teach anyone from scratch, even if you do have a cute ass," Tatsuki's growl did little more than to amuse her, "Can't take a compliment?"

"I don't need compliments about my ass," Tatsuki said, snark-mode engaged.

"Hm," Kuukaku hummed, taking a moment of thought after staring her down in the eyes. Apparently it was there that she found what she had been looking for, "Okay, yeah I can see it more now. You're his," Tatsuki had no idea how she'd determined that just from looking at her when she had been skeptical after first hearing about it, but there wasn't any time to dwell on any such thing.

Chad and Uryuu walked through the halls, dressed in their own respective battle outfits, both somewhat surprised to see Tatsuki there alone. They had been informed that she was coming along, but they hadn't expected her to come alone.

"Tatsuki," Uryuu said in greeting as Chad silently waved to her, "Are you ready to get going?"

Why not? It was her first mission without the safety net of Naruto being around, and she assumed that working on things like this would be similar to pulling off band-aids, the quicker the better. And she really wasn't a fan of being observed by one of Naruto's friends, "Yep, let's go."

Uryuu and Chad both bowed to Kuukaku in thanks for feeding them and allowing them to stay the night in her abode. It had been an appreciated break as they traveled across the Soul Society en route to their mission.

Kuukaku grinned at the trio, "Don't be strangers now. And girl, make sure to tell your sensei he's got a bottle waiting for him whenever he or Yoruichi comes through again."

"To break over his head, or to drink?"

"Well, just let him sweat overthinking it until I see him again."

Tatsuki cracked a smile and gestured to the direction of the exit with a sweeping gesture meant for Uryuu and Chad, "Lead the way," She said, following the two boys out, "I don't even know where we're supposed to be going or what we're doing."

Kuukaku watched them leave before thinking back to what she'd gotten out of watching Tatsuki when she'd been present. Naruto really had found someone that he could train, 'She wasn't anything like the others at all,' She observed, noting the strange combination of energies that she had until then only noticed from Naruto, 'She felt just like him. Or as much like him as any regular human could be.'

If she wound up being anything like him, she was going to be pretty dangerous. Kuukaku wished she could take a bet on just how long it would take before Tatsuki herself actually realized that much.

XxX

(Karakura Town – Kurosaki Clinic)

After his most recent excursion into the eternal desert that was Las Noches, Ichigo found it prudent to actually spend some time at home in his own body for once. A fight to the finish with an ex-Shinigami captain who had been given the powers of a Hollow had not exactly been an easy task.

But it had been his choice to go headlong into Hueco Mundo. Though Naruto hadn't ever forced any of them into the realm of the Hollows with the exception of Tatsuki for experience, Ichigo didn't really want to sit on the sidelines if there would have been a chance to reach the scumbag who was threatening his friends and all of Karakura Town.

He was a protector, and sometimes that meant trying to act before something horrible could happen. If nothing else, his involvement with Equilibrium, because he would not admit that he was employed by Naruto of all people, allowed him the opportunity to try and affect things.

With a sigh, he rolled onto his back, staring up at the ceiling of his room from his bed, getting a bit of a chill from the open window nearby. It had been uncharacteristically warmer and sunnier early, but now it was a cloudy, cool day outside. Appropriate for the fall. It was just as well. For once, all Ichigo wanted to do was kick back and relax for a bit.

Ichigo's vision was suddenly covered by orange fur. Damn it Kon, "You've got a day off, and _this _is all you're doing?" The obnoxious stuffed lion said, jumping on Ichigo's face repeatedly, "If I was in your body right now, I'd be doing way cooler stuff than just laying around!"

Ichigo reached up and plucked the Mod Soul-possessed doll off of his face before throwing him across the room into a crack in his closet, "Oh I'm sure you have your share of 'fun' whenever I'm gone. I don't even want to think of what you get up to when I'm not around."

"AHA! THE COLD CHILL OF FALL WILL BRING YOU YOUR DOOM!"

Ichigo's eyes went wide as his father flew through his open window and dropped an elbow square in his chest. Isshin bounced off of his son, giving Ichigo enough space to move his legs underneath him and kick him across the room, sending him smack against the wall.

Completely unamused by the latest installment of his father's surprise attacks, Ichigo jumped off of his bed, shaking a fist at the elder Kurosaki, "Old man, I kid you not, I'll rub your face on the hardwood if you don't cut it out!"

Isshin coughed weakly, the wind knocked out of him, "Not a bad counteratttack my son. Perhaps you weren't as open as I thought. But I didn't come just to test you."

"Oh joy," Ichigo responded sarcastically, settling back down onto his bed to stare at the ceiling again, "Well, what's up?"

"It's about your part-time job."

A hardened glint shone in Ichigo's eyes for a second, recognizing what his father was speaking of. Discovering that Isshin used to be a Shinigami let Ichigo know that the man was aware of far more than Ichigo could have ever possibly figured. He owed Tatsuki a new pair of gloves or a new fighting game for dropping that particular dime.

"What do you want to talk about?"

With a sigh, Isshin leapt into the meat of the conversation, "Son, your boss is playing a dangerous game," He told him, "I'm not talking about the Arrancar, or Aizen. I mean the Seireitei. He's deliberately setting himself up to get on their bad side once all of that mess is over with."

Between constantly ignoring whatever authority the Seireitei thought they had over the affairs of the living world (and by extension, Naruto), the active enlistment of at least two Arrancar into Equilibrium's ranks, and the casual relationship he openly kept with several other renegade elements that the Soul Society would have been up in arms over if they had the full scope of the situation, it was just a matter of time. The moment he became a more prominent issue than handling Aizen, it would go down.

"Naruto? That guy is an idiot," He was a strong idiot, but he still did way too many dumb, eccentric things for Ichigo to really respect him as a dangerous element, "Most of the time he seems more dangerous to himself than he is to anyone else," But then, he started fighting, and all of that went out of the window, "He's not my damn boss either."

Isshin chuckled at Ichigo's perception of Naruto, and he wasn't completely wrong about it, but he was missing oh so much, "He's an idiot, just like how you thought Urahara was? The most dangerous people are the ones that can convince you that they're harmless. If he was an idiot, how would he have gotten himself where he is right now as quickly as he did?"

So he'd positioned himself smack-dab in the center of a struggle that would more than likely decide the fate of existence as a whole. The guy was 2000 years old with superpowers. He was going to wind up in the thick of it all eventually, "What does this have to do with Naruto and the Shinigami fighting?" Ichigo asked.

Isshin shook his head. He was going about trying to get his point across the wrong way.

The former Shinigami captain figured another approach, "Can you tell me off the top of your head the things you don't like about the Soul Society?" He asked, getting a deepening of Ichigo's frown, "But you still work with the Seireitei, because you're close with more than a few Shinigami there. I guarantee you, he can find more wrong than you can, and I can tell you one thing about the kind of person I figure Naruto to be. If he sees something wrong enough, he won't just sit back and accept it."

"He wouldn't fight the Gotei 13. He has friends there too," Ichigo insisted, having seen Naruto interact with and actually openly refer to some of the Seireitei's top warriors as friends of his, "Just as many as I do."

"You think he wouldn't fight them anyway if he thought he had to?"

Ichigo wanted to say no, but he remembered the way that Naruto had apparently been very close with at least two of the Bounts that had aspirations of destroying the Seireitei themselves. In the days after the deciding battles in that conflict, Naruto wasn't quite himself.

Yes. If he felt the reason was great enough to initiate it, or if they took it upon themselves to force whatever issue Isshin believed they would have with him, he would fight. He would fight, and he wouldn't be alone, even if Ichigo and all of his friends decided to cut ties.

"Just think about it," Isshin said, leaving him with that as he left through Ichigo's door.

He didn't know how to put it. Ichigo hadn't seen the kind of things and the kind of people that Isshin had seen. If it came down to it, and the Seireitei wouldn't change for the better, altering its hypocritical practices and injustices, Naruto would put it into motion himself. Especially if he was really immortal. He definitely didn't seem the type to let something he didn't like slide.

Isshin was afraid. Afraid that one day the two sides would butt heads. From what he knew of them both, Isshin was certain that they would. When they did, Ichigo and by extension the rest of his friends would be put into a position of either siding with Naruto, or siding with the Gotei 13. Ichigo would never let the side he felt had wronged the other get away with it, and the others would follow, because their ties to him were stronger than their ties to Equilibrium or the Seireitei.

His son was much too bullheaded to sit such a thing out, which was why for Ichigo's sake, Isshin hoped he was wrong. If push came to shove, he didn't think he could stop Ichigo from choosing one over the other, and he wouldn't have wanted him to go up against one side or the other in earnest.

XxX

(With Naruto – Urahara Shop)

Urahara was damn good at making Gigai, especially the ones that didn't leave energy signatures, the ones that Naruto paid him to give to Arrancar like Gaara, Hidan, Nelliel, and now Harribel. Naruto honestly had to search his whole store to find where the latter was, because he couldn't sense her.

Eventually he found her just sitting in the van that sat alongside the building, just leaning back in the driver's seat, looking at the clouds moving in the sky. Without saying a word, Naruto popped the passenger's door open and took a seat right next to her, just listening to the wind and watching the sky along with her.

After a while, he spared a glance to the side to take in her appearance as of then.

The well-endowed dark-skinned Arrancar wore a purple turtleneck and jeans, her hair remaining in its usual messy state with three braided locks. In her Gigai, there were no signs of the bones comprising the mask that normally covered the entire lower half of her face. This allowed her melancholy demeanor to make itself known in earnest.

"So," Naruto started to say, the weight of the silence bearing on him after a while, "How are you feeling? Did you heal up alright?" It was a dumb question, because Orihime had done the healing, and there was never anything left wrong with you after that girl was done with her work. He just wanted her to say something, anything.

But she didn't. Not a single word. She could have given him _something _Jeez, this woman was such a buzzkill, but then again she didn't exactly have a whole lot of reasons to be pleased with anything going at the moment in her life… afterlife… whatever.

"Okay, so I heard you want to talk to your Fracción," Naruto said to her, "But you don't need to let us know that. I told you, you can go and do what you want, even if it is joining back up with Aizen."

They hadn't even bothered giving Harribel a prisoner kind of Gigai, which they did have and had ample opportunity to place her into. She could leave hers of her own free will. She simply didn't have the will. Her entire reason for fighting had been proven worthless by one of the people she would have been prepared to sacrifice herself for.

Those same people still had the services of her underlings, who were far more loyal to her than they were to any real semblance of the Arrancar Army, status as Números notwithstanding. Even if they suffered no outright consequences from Aizen himself for her loss, they no longer had her protection. A sexist lunatic like Nnoitra was only one example of the other members of the Espada who would victimize them just because he could, to get her back for being a woman and having a position so much higher than him. Aaroniero would probably find an excuse and a way to eat them. Barragan would kill them off just to settle an old score.

Harribel turned her deep green eyes onto Naruto before finally choosing to grace his eardrums with the sound of her voice, "After what Gin did, and after being taken away, I know that I cannot go back," Things would never be the same again. She would be held at arm's length and easily expendable at best. it would be a complete death sentence in the worst case, "I want to make sure Mila-Rose, Apacchi, and Sung-Sun will be alright without me."

"And if they won't be?"

"...I will think of something," She responded, "We survived together, just us against every other living thing in Hueco Mundo once before all of this started. If it comes to a situation like that, I have no doubt we can do it again."

Fair enough. It was her own business. She was oversimplifying it to an absurd degree, but then again one had to be able to compartmentalize in the midst of a complex situation. This wasn't exactly cut-and-dry simple.

"Fine. Come on. You're staying with me until you leave then," Naruto said, "I'd let you stay here, but this is kind of Nel's turf. She said she wanted to leave after she paid us back for healing her, but for whatever reason she and her buddies still hang around."

Nelliel seemed to take a shine to Urahara for whatever reason, possibly something left over from him doing the bulk of taking care of her back when she'd been stuck in her child form. Whatever the reason, she liked him more than she liked anyone else in Equilibrium. She was pretty much indifferent to the rest of them for the most part. Never unpleasant, but she was hard to endear oneself to.

There was no reason to risk a Tres Espada-level catfight (rawr), unlikely as it may have been, when there was another perfectly good, much larger, possibly safer place for Harribel to stay that didn't encroach on Nelliel's Urahara Shop space.

Harribel leaned forward, setting her arms and chest on the steering wheel, "What about the Seireitei?" She asked.

Again with this? How many times did he have to have this conversation with everyone? He didn't work underneath anyone. There wasn't anyone that could really tell him what to do, "What about 'em? They don't control me. Their whole Central 46 government, or whatever it's called, is screwed up, but I don't want to get started on that. It doesn't matter. This does."

"Why?"

"Their idea of justice and my idea of justice-," Naruto punctuated, thunking his foot off of the dashboard of the van, "-Are two totally different things."

Here lay was the unbridgeable gap between the two that could probably never allow the two sides to join together for real. Naruto's could never accept that 46 individuals sitting in a council were the ones who dictated what was right and wrong with what went on in the rest of the Soul Society and in the living world, with no real influence from anyone else actually living in the kind of hell those two planes of existence could be. And when their calls were notably corrupt and wrong, such as during the entire Rukia situation, no one questioned anything about it.

That meant that there was a precedent for b.s. calls made by them. The Visoreds and Urahara had borne witness to this firsthand, and that was just one other situation. They were infallible. When the Seireitei's government made stupid mistakes, the wronged parties didn't even get an, 'Oops, our bad,' out of it.

He had no idea how to even begin handling something like that. Not in the slightest. God, and he had wanted to be Hokage? That was just a village. This was literally a situation encompassing two entire planes of existence.

"I would have made the worst Hokage _ever_," Naruto said to himself with an honest laugh. Harribel didn't know what a Hokage was, or what was funny enough to laugh about at the moment, but when he opened the door to get out of the van, she went to follow him back to his base.

Whatever he was, whatever his group of individuals would wind up doing, for now they were the shelter over her head until she got to her Fracción. After all, any port in a storm.

* * *

**Well, well, well. Fancy meeting you here. Small world.**

**Anyway, that's the situation. Three sides to a war. Nobody trusts anybody. Every side is trying to figure out how to handle the other after one of their enemies, common or otherwise, is vanquished. You know... how every multi-faceted military and political situation that has ever existed is.**

**It's slowly a-churning and a-building, and eventually stuff will boil over, and scorch the earth with its hotness.**

**Alright, that's it. Now if you'll excuse me, it's one in the morning and I have to go to work. Even with a real job, I'm still working all of the graveyard shifts.**

**Until the next time, Kenchi out.**


End file.
